Tournament of Champions ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
Meatballs and Grits
Voice-over: "This chef presented to you smoked meatballs, grits, smoky wild mushroom ragu, and sweet onion sauce. The meatballs were made of the top sirloin, pancetta, sweet bread, and then hit it with a powerful hit of Alderwood smoke. At the end, they used lobster mushrooms, and then for the juice, they juiced onions, which they used in the sweet onion sauce. Honeycrisp apples were also introduced into the ragu.
"Mmm. This is comfort food. This feels like someone just came up and gave you a hug."
"What I enjoyed was the thought of turning the top sirloin, into a meatball. But the problem is, is the texture of the lobster mushroom. Lobster mushroom takes a long time to soften."
"When I think of comfort food, I think of food that you don't necessarily have to chew as much."
"The grits is delicious, and the sauce is delicious. And I was raised in meatball country. Making meatball with beef is very hard because it gets dry easily. This is not dry. The pancetta and everything really played a big part of that."
"Can I just say something about the sweetbread? Because I feel like that's a very unusual choice to choose sweet breads, and they're very soft and very delicate, and putting them into a meatball, I've never even heard of it, but it does give it a really nice texture. It's soft, so I think that was a smart choice and elevated it somewhat from just meatballs and grits."
"I can taste the smoke, although it doesn't beat me over the head. You know, it's subtle."
