- Hey, we're Sorted Food.
- And over the last five days, we've been on
an epic journey through Kentucky.
But this is no holiday.
No, no.
We're taking inspiration from everything we've eaten
and having a Kentucky Cookoff at the end
of our trip. We've been completing a series
of challenges to win extra cooking time.
And as it stands, I have 35 minutes.
And Jamie, he's behind on just 25.
It's gonna be tight and there's loads at stake.
But first, to ease the nerves, we needed a drink.
[rock music]
- Ebbers!
(cheering)
- You see, you're now making me choose
between going to look at classic American cars
or drinking bourbon.
- No, no, we're we're not giving you a choice.
We're not stopping.
(laughs)
It's big enough for you?
- It's never big enough for me.
- We travelled to Bardstown Bourbon Company
to learn all things bourbon with our new
best mate, Dan.
Bardstown is thought of as the
bourbon capital of the world.
And with 11 distilleries within just 16 miles,
it's easy to see why.
Established in 2016,
Bardstown Bourbon Company has quadrupled in size
and makes use of the abundance of local corn
to start the distilling process.
- This is all the grains cooking for four hours.
You're converting all the starches into fermentable sugar.
[upbeat music]
So this is just converting
sugar into alcohol.
[upbeat music]
- This is insane.
This is like science meets craft.
[upbeat music]
- So this will be about 120 proof.
It is a bourbon with a rye as a secondary grain.
This might be reminiscent of say a 12 year
Scottish whiskey but this is just a four year
bourbon. The color's picked up much more quickly.
- So it was about time we tried some more bourbon.
- So this is the entire history of bourbon and whiskey
dating back to 1892.
[funky music]
So this is gonna be a little stronger proof
a little more of a kick.
- More kick, but still really smooth.
- Really smooth, nice. Well balanced, right?
[funky music]
- It's great, isn't it?
- I want you guys to try a little piece
of whiskey history, this.
This is one of my favourite bottles in the world.
So this is a
a true rarity.
So this is old Fitzgerald
1956.
- And out of interest, how much would this
bottle be worth now?
- Probably about $10,000 right now.
(laughs)
(glasses clink)
- Cheers. I'm not worthy of this.
Wow.
That is so sweet at the beginning, isn't it?
- That is so smooth.
- It's nice.
- It's so much dried fruit. It's like figgy and
- Figgy, figgy, yeah
- Dried figs all the way.
- Yep yep. Completely.
- Wow, that is amazing.
(laughs)
Before we said goodbye, Dan had just one final challenge.
- Okay. Got a special challenge
for you this evening for 10 minutes.
We have three unique finished bourbons.
So these are bourbons that were placed
into a barrel that was previously used
for another wine, beer, or spirit.
So a secondary life in the barrel.
You have bourbon finished in Napa Valley
wine casks.
Bourbon finished in Oloroso sherry casks,
and bourbon finished in Orange Curaçao casks.
Your goal is to identify each one.
[upbeat violin music]
We'll start at the back.
The one that gave it away the most,
the sherry finish.
[music continues]
Correct.
Orange Curaçao.
Correct! You did it.
(both cheering)
- Yes!
- You can both have the 10 minutes
and I think you really need to thank Dan
for the expert testing class we've had.
- Thanks Dan.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you so much, that was incredible.
That was a once in a lifetime that
that's how good that was.
- That was unbelievable.
[upbeat saxophone]
- As a Brit, if you're driving down the highway
in Kentucky and you see a castle in the distance,
you're gonna stop to find out about it.
So, that's exactly what we did.
And it turned out to be beautiful.
[music continues]
The owners were inspired by a trip
to Europe and came back and built this in 1969.
And they also have a lovely garden where
you can pick your own. So we've just had lunch
and the boys have got some battle ingredients.
[music continues]
[music crescendos]
(wind blowing)
- He's so relaxed.
[music continues]
- We arrived at the B&B in the stunning
Kentucky countryside.
And then it was finally time to battle it out.
[music continues]
- Mike has won three extra challenges
and therefore has a total of 45 minutes to
Jamie's 35. Which means you have a head start
and you can begin in 3, 2, 1.
Cook.
- This is horrible. I want-
I need to start cooking.
- No, just relax. Chill.
- No!
Bloody elks.
(laughs)
- An elk is a big deer.
Key word: deer.
(wheezes)
- So Mike, what is your dish?
- Okay, so a running theme throughout our time
in Kentucky has been great chefs taking something
that everyone wants to eat and giving it
a bit of chef-y flair with some incredible
locally sourced ingredients.
So I'm making a grilled cheese
with an outside of maple bourbon butter,
beer cheese on the inside with some
smoked Gouda, country ham, pickled
salted tomatoes, and a side of spring onions
and carrots with a southern fried breadcrumb.
So all the best dishes that we tried
basically balanced smokey, sweet, and salty
incredibly well. And that's what I'm trying to
do in this sandwich.
So I've gotta start off by dry grilling my carrots.
They're going straight onto the grill.
I'll put them on the cold side because I think
they might burn if I put them on the hot side.
At Barn8, we had a massive piece of sourdough
with these incredible tomatoes on top
and that's kind of where I'm getting the basis
of my inspiration for this dish.
I'm gonna put a little bit of sea salt on them
and leave them to basically bring out all that
lovely umami flavour for about 20 minutes.
- Has it been 10 minutes?
- Not yet.
- Oh, come on.
- It's been eight. It's been eight.
- These haven't even done anything,
so that's worrying.
- If it's been eight, I'm gonna get my stuff-
- No, you stay sat on the rocking chair.
- I'm gonna get my stuff out the fridge.
- No.
- So that I can get going.
- No.
- No don't start. No.
- His stuff's already out the fridge
when he started his minutes.
- Yeah, because I'm forward thinking.
- Well then you'll have to go and get it
when your time starts.
- No, I'm going now.
(laughs)
- Carrots are taking ages to cook, so the
spring onions are going on too now.
- Your 35 minutes begins in
3,
2,
1,
now.
(bell dings)
- Right. We always say celebrate seasonal
and local ingredients.
And in Kentucky that's incredibly easy
cause there's so much of it.
And it's all fantastic.
So I'm doing a celebration of Kentucky
across four dishes.
Dish number one: KFC. That's right,
Kentucky Fried Catfish.
I'm gonna start by marinating catfish
fillets in hot sauce, buttermilk, and garlic.
We had catfish at Wallace Station Cafe
and Ouita told us that it's an absolute
Kentucky staple.
- Nice.
- I need to make a beer cheese, inside.
We had beer cheese at multiple places,
including the James Beam distillery.
It was always excellent.
It was really yeasty and delicious and I thought
do you know what? Stick that between two toasted
pieces of bread. That's gonna taste amazing.
- Oh. That's nice.
Nice to see you.
- Could you please just keep an eye on my
carrots and stuff?
- I don't know.
- If you're over in that way, just an
just an odd look.
So I've got cheddar, cream cheese,
bit of that smoked Gouda,
and some butter going into a blender.
Then I'm chucking in some vinegar,
some Worcester sauce, and a little bit
of smoked paprika as a nod to the pimento cheese
that we've been tasting so frequently here.
The mustard I'm using is the honey and bourbon
mustard that I bought from Rebecca Ruth's.
Finally, drizzling a little bit of local IPA
and that should all come together as a really
punchy but smooth,
beery cheese sauce.
- How are Mike's carrots looking?
- Not my problem.
- We've set them up to dry store in the uh
what is it? A bandstand?
- Dish number two, marinated cucumbers.
Picked these cucumbers earlier from a farm
outside of Castle, obviously.
I'm gonna slice them up thinly
and then marinate them in some cucumber vinegar,
soy sauce, and bourbon maple syrup.
We had marinated cucumbers at OBC
and at Barn8 and they were both spectacular.
- An embarrassingly simple dish, but like so many
of the things we've had across the state, if it's
awesome local seasonal fruit and/or veg,
less is more.
We've got 25 minutes left.
Not seen Mike for 10 minutes.
- Yeah, I'm guessing he's all right.
- It's rather a change to proceedings.
I could get used to this. It's much easier than
standing on the sidelines in the studio.
- Dish number three, and I think you're gonna
like this one, Ebbers.
Old-fashioned Brussels sprouts.
I think Brussels sprouts were basically
on every menu of every restaurant that we went to.
We had them in a variety of different ways
and I'm gonna see if I can come up with my own
special spin on them.
I'm frying Brussels sprouts in olive oil,
adding some garlic. Then in with more
bourbon maple syrup. Let that caramelise down.
Add in freshly squeezed orange juice,
little pop of fresh corn. Job done.
(wheezes)
I want that to caramelise up nicely, Ebbers.
It's not as dark as I wanted it to be.
It's just not getting hot enough.
- Oh, how are my things getting on?
They are not cooking.
- What are you gonna do about that?
(sighs)
- Get them in the oven.
- No, put them on the hotter side.
- I've moved my carrots and my spring onions
to the hot side because everything is going wrong.
So, you can see all of this amazing delicious
tomato-y water has now come out of my tomatoes.
Now I'm gonna cover them in this cucumber
infused vinegar. Thanks J.
- Oh, you're welcome.
- It will give an acidic twist.
It's not gonna pickle them.
- Oh, hang on boys, trouble.
Got a fly in my wine.
- Oh.
- Oh it sucks to be Ebbers.
- So some of the way that I wanna get across
this sweetness in this dish is by making the
maple bourbon butter. So just combining the two
and I'm hoping that it'll give it a really
sort of like syrupy glaze on the outside
but caramelise really nicely when I put the bread
on the grill.
So I've got a Kentucky bourbon syrup
that I've borrowed from my good friend Jamie here.
- Sorry mate. I'll get the syrup.
I'll get the vinegar.
- Do you wanna try some of this?
- Nope.
- Fine, thanks.
- That's nothing against you. I wanna hold back
and enjoy it at the end.
[rock n' roll music begins]
[music continues]
- So cute.
- Dish number four. Let's celebrate some
great melons.
Don't, stop it.
by just cutting them up, serving them with
grilled country ham and a lovely Billy bonus:
some fig balsamic glaze.
Now we've had this in lots of places and
it's been a revelation to me and you
don't need to do anything to it because the ingredients
are so good by themselves.
Can you move those carrots out of the way?
- I can't. I need them.
- You've had so much more time.
- I've had 10 minutes. How is that so much more?
- Ebbers!
- Just doing a taste test.
- Okay, so there's two thirds of the barbecue
and you're using two of those thirds.
- Yeah, I would love to use this third.
- What? So you wanna take the whole thing?
- No, you can have that third cause
that's not working for me.
Your carrots are coming over there.
- No no no. They can't. They haven't-
They're not gonna cook.
(angry sounds)
You have not planned this.
- Temperature control is everything
and I'm not sure they've got it yet.
- Can we have a time check Ebbers?
- Another half glass of wine.
It's about 11 minutes.
- Time to fry some catfish.
Gotta take the catfish out of the marinade.
Dip it in some corn meal, get it all coated and
then into oil on each side for a few minutes.
Hope that it cooks through.
Just gonna check the tongs work.
(tongs click)
Yep. They're good.
- Good temperature on the oil of that.
You want a good sizzle so it doesn't soak up
the oil and go soggy, but not so hot that it
browns and burns before your fish is cooked.
- So I have breadcrumbs. I've got smoked paprika,
onion powder, garlic powder.
Loads of stuff like that all going into a pan
with some butter.
And I'm gonna toast that off on the grill.
- Three and a half minutes.
- We're fighting, we've run out of space on the grill
so I am literally just going to pan fry the country ham
and I'm gonna toast the breadcrumbs on the hob.
They'll have to do.
(sniffs)
How you doin', Spaff?
- Yeah. Alright.
- Oh, looking all right. Looking all right.
- No. Oh you piece of crap.
- I'll just leave that there.
- I've sacrificed some of my country ham
to the barbecue gods.
- They're combining lots of flavours we've had over the week.
Maybe they've been a bit ambitious
with outdoor cooking in the time.
Two minutes!
- No!
- Jay's got four dishes to plate up.
That's 30 seconds a plate.
- Bread time. I'm smearing the maple bourbon
butter onto each side of my bread that's going
onto the grill to toast up and become lovely and
golden and caramelised.
Gonna spread my beer cheese over the top of each
of those slices.
Then on with my country ham, my pickled tomatoes,
and some more smoked Gouda.
Top on, close the lid.
We got hickory wood in amongst the charcoal.
So when I close the lid all of that lovely smoke
should penetrate my sandwich.
- Last 90 seconds.
- One plate done.
- Let's toss some salad.
Carrots are a cross between charred and raw.
Don't know how that happened, but they're going
into a bowl with some olive oil and my
spring onions. I'm gonna toss them all together.
And finally, sprinkle over that
southern fried crumb.
- Lemon, lemon, lemon. Where did the lemon go?
- One minute.
It's carnage.
There is stuff everywhere.
20 seconds.
Last 10 seconds.
5
4
3
2
1
Step back from the food.
Get yourself a cold drink and we'll get
those into the sexies.
(panting)
- That was hard.
- You've done a wonderful job there.
- I dunno if it tastes any good.
- Nah, same.
[rock music]
[music continues]
(sighs)
- Well I enjoyed that.
- Oh, I'm sure you did. What chapter did
you get up to?
- You were neckin' wine and reading books.
(laughs)
- And giving the occasional time check.
Mike, in 45 minutes you've made a
beer cheese and country ham grilled cheese
with charred carrots, southern fried crumb
and extra dipping stuff.
Grilled cheese, classic.
But this is surprisingly inviting.
- Charred. Key word, Ebbers.
- Well, the good thing is that
carrots can be eaten raw or cooked.
So some of these might be halfway through,
but we'll enjoy.
- Cheers.
(crunching)
- Oh wow.
(crunching)
That beer cheese
is epic.
- That beer cheese is really good, mate.
- I'm actually quite happy with it.
- The crumb is super tasty and spiced
and I like the fact the carrots have got a char
albeit I think it's fair to say
a little crunchy at one end.
(laughs)
- They're inconsistent.
- But hey, that's only half the dish.
Been waiting for this.
It's got great colour on it and it feels
like a great grilled cheese in the sense that
it's weighty but it's all stuck and
held together. I'm digging in.
(crunching)
- Cheers.
(crunching)
- It's a ham cheese and tomato sandwich, but
with lots of little nods to all the things
we've picked up on our route.
And I'm loving that kind of char on the bread and
the smokiness throughout.
That's good.
- Well thank God for that.
I'm happy with that.
- Very nice.
- Yummy yum yum.
- Ebbers, I have a Kentucky smorgasbord for you.
(laughing)
Cucumbers, catfish,
old-fashioned Brussels sprouts.
And finally, watermelon, country ham,
and a figgy balsamic vinegar.
- Cheers.
It's a lovely nod to so many of the places where
we've wanted to eat the entire menu.
So rather than order entrees, we've ordered loads
of the appetisers or sides so that we can share
and taste lots of different things.
I love that.
And all the ingredients are those seasonal ones
we've seen across so many menus.
- I'd love to have done barbecue properly.
Not in 35 minutes.
- And you were too rubbish at the challenges.
- Right.
- But I have to say, in 35 minutes
you've achieved a lot. Each dish is
very, very simple, but there's four
of them going on, which means you've done each
of those in less than 10 minutes.
There is nothing original about putting
ham with melon.
- Nope.
- However, what I quite like is the fact
you've got it and it doesn't need changing.
The cucumber with the catfish is really,
really good. For me, this is the most inspired
dish: the old-fashioned sprouts.
And it's an idea I'm gonna steal.
If I'm picking holes, the sprouts
could have been hotter.
- Yeah.
- Cooking for less time.
But actually right in the centre there
they've still got a good bite.
- They're delicious.
- And they taste great.
- They're delicious.
- The orange and the bourbon maple.
- Wow
- That is so yummy.
- That is a genius dish.
Like conceptually, that's brilliant.
And they taste great.
- I think they're both great celebrations
of a few days driving around Kentucky.
And therefore I don't really want a loser.
I feel like there's two winners
but I think there is a winner of winners.
- Mhmm. That's very nice of you.
- Well wow that's a polite way, yeah.
- And I think today
my winner of winners
as lovely as that beer cheese is,
are these four plates.
- Oh!
Oh, that was not in the bag.
(all laughing)
That was not in the stars.
- You have been the underdog ever since the elk.
- What a time.
- We've driven a thousand miles around Kentucky.
- What a time.
- And we have eaten so much amazing food.
And met so many incredible people. And that,
is just a little homage to it.
Well done boys.
- Thanks, Ebbers.
- Yeah.
- Great time.
- What a trip.
- Should we get a beer?
- Yes.
- Or a bourbon?
- Both.
(laughs)
- At the heart of this journey
has not only been the delicious food,
but the welcoming people that make Kentucky
what it is.
And we couldn't have done this trip
without you, our community.
Sometimes in life there are experiences you know
you'll never forget.
And travelling around the USA in one
of their most iconic cars
with two of your best mates.
Well, this trip will certainly
not be forgotten in a while.
[uplifting music]