Top Moments of Chopped After Hours: Teen Tournament

"I'm gonna ask you to be more mature than you normally are," says Ted, "like teenagers" from the tournament. "No, I don't think that's gonna happen," says Amanda, who hoards the mint, which Aarón wants too. The judges must cook with cherry drink pickles, lamb chops, kale chips and ricotta salata.

Amanda gets started searing the lamb on the bone for her salad. With only 20 minutes for the round, she intends to eventually cut the meat from the bone to ensure it cooks through. "I know it seems, you know, predictable," she tells Ted about her choice of dish, "but to me it's all I could see when I saw this basket."

"I love all these things," Aarón says of the ingredients, "except this" (as he points to the cherry drink pickles). But he makes the ingredient work in his favor, dicing the pickles up finely to use as if they were cornichons for his lamb tartare tostadas. "So you're still gonna keep a little of that Mexican flair," says Ted.

"A little smoked paprika coming from Scott's station," says Ted as he walks over, drawn by the aromas of fresh-ground spices. "No, it's my cologne," jokes Scott. He's making a spice-crusted lamb using smoked paprika, star anise and fennel seed. Ted is impressed. Scott points out: "I'm a chef, bro."

Aarón plates his tartare on freshly fried tortilla rounds. Ted asks how far done he is and Aarón shouts assuredly, "I'm 90," as the last few minutes count down on the clock. The tartare combines all the basket ingredients, except for the kale chips, which Aarón uses as garnish.

Just as Scott's plating, he decides to make a frico out of the ricotta salata. "You only have a couple minutes left," says Ted. "Can you pull that off?" Scott doesn't think he can, but he tries anyway. Unfortunately, the cheese doesn't melt correctly, so Scott crumbles it up and calls it a "crumble."

"I hope people at home are taking notes from you," Aarón tells Amanda, whose dish he thinks has the perfect balance of brightness and acidity. "You have taken us to France, and back to Mexico, and back to France," says Ted of Aarón's dish, which is smoky and refined. "I'm not sure if this is an appetizer," Scott says of his dish, but the others disagree and love all the Mediterranean influences.