- Hello, we are Sorted Food,
and today our three normals are competing
to create four portions of a delicious dish
in just 30 minutes,
and on a five pound budget.
I'm going to judge it at the end,
as well as being a little judgemental throughout.
Your time starts in,
Three, two, one. Cook off!
(bell rings)
No time for a sandwich, Jay.
- [Jay] Don't worry.
- Mike, you're on the front,
what are you doing?
- I'm making a mushroom
and leek pie served with crispy lemon chicken.
- Sounds delicious,
and you're starting with puff pastry.
We know from a recent pick the premium,
you've gone for the more basic option.
- [Mike] What I am doing is scoring the edge.
Sort of halfway down into the pastry,
because I'm gonna whack this in the oven,
and the middle is going to puff up,
and create a lid.
- Sounds like a huge rectangular vol-au-vent to me.
- It's a huge rectangular risk.
- Meanwhile, Baz, you're cracking on with veg.
What have you got that for?
- [Baz] This is the base to my broth, which also goes
with my delicious ramen dumplings.
But right now,
I've got some hardy veg going in.
Carrots and onions and garlic.
Cooking it out with some mushrooms
and the stock, with the sachets from these bad boys.
- You
- What!
- I'm taking your garlic.
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's only half an hour.
Also we're quite tight for time, so
I'm multitasking by cooking my eggs
for seven minutes for a nice soft boil.
I Hope.
- Jay.
- [Jay] Yo.
- What you doing with your sandwiches?
- Number one, I've made a whole bread tunnel.
I am making chorizo and feta bread panadas,
serving it with a sweetcorn,
and tomato succotash and pesto broccoli.
So I'm going to all corners of the world,
to create an amazing dish, which is
a big hack and a big cheap, on empanadas.
- I'm big fan of letting those crusts
go a bit stale,
and then blending them up
with whatever leftover herbs you might have,
and they'll go on top of fish to bake
or top of chicken as like a herby crumb.
- So having cut out big circles of bread,
I'm then rolling them flat,
adding slice of chorizo,
bit of feta, slice of chorizo
adding another circle of bread on top,
pressing down with a ramekin,
and then sealing them in,
brush them with oil,
and they'll go into an oven really hot,
230 degrees Celsius, for about 12 minutes.
- Jay, can I ask a question, as a friend.
- Yes, mate.
- Is your dish going to cause
an international incident?
- Uh.
- Mike. Your jar of mustard,
We've charged you for the entire jar,
cause you had to buy it. You're not using it all.
- Thanks for that.
- But what are you using some of it for?
- Well in here is lemon zest, lemon juice,
mustard, garlic, all mixed together,
and it's gonna create the seasoning base
for my chicken thighs.
These here have been in the fridge,
uncovered for 24 hours
and that dries the skin out.
I've allocated the biggest chunk of my budget
to the chicken, which is the right thing to do.
In this case, skin on.
Crispy skin is key.
Hence why I'm keeping it out of the main pie,
because that's gonna win me the battle.
That skin.
- I would say, if you are leaving the chicken
uncovered in your fridge overnight,
make sure it's on the bottom shelf,
just so you don't get any of the cross contamination.
- Ebbers is our health and safety officer.
He went on a first aid course.
- It's true, I'm liable.
Another really nice tip with the chicken thighs.
By cutting into the bone you kind of open up.
The heat will get in quicker,
and cook through to the bone.
Okay, Mike, you're gonna have to get that chicken in.
You've had a third of your time.
- Look at that.
Look at that.
Season with salt and pepper on the top,
and then they go into the oven for 10 minutes
before I grill them later on.
Oh, hello.
- [Jay] Hello.
- Oh, we are cheek to cheek.
- For my broth, chucking in a load of water and my spring greens
- Middle core's a little bit tough.
You wanna cut those out.
But spring greens are another great example of
a veg you get an awful lot for your money.
- Let's talk to tomato sauce, table spoon
of oil going in with some chopped chorizo
from the same slices that I had earlier.
I'm gonna add in some sweetcorn, some garlic,
let that all fry out,
and then I'm gonna add in chopped tomatoes,
to turn it into my succotash.
- [Mike] I'm having some of your oil.
- [Jamie] No, you're not.
- [Mike] I am.
- [Jamie] I had some of yours to be fair so.
- [Mike] You (beep).
I was wondering where that went.
right I'm using all your oil then.
- Mike moving on to his other affordable veg.
Leeks and mushrooms,
good logic with ordering ingredients.
So leeks going in first, they need the longest
then while they're cooking,
chopping the mushrooms, then adding those in.
The garlic's in. You're kind of building those flavours.
Potentially ingenious use of
instant ramen noodles, Baz.
What earth you doing?
- Potentially? Ha!
- So for my ramen noodle dumplings,
I'm taking the noodles,
and I'm going to smash them to smithereens,
and then remould them back into dumplings.
A little bit of egg and a bit of water.
Ideally, I would have used three eggs for this mix
but I haven't got enough cash, so
a bit of water's gonna have to do.
- [Ben] Halfway through.
- No!
- What?
You didn't push play, did you?
- Why would you have to push play on an oven?
- Because it's electronic, granddad.
- Oh (bleep)!
- They're not even.
- Jay's lost the battle.
- [Jay] These have been for 10 of the 12 minutes
- Mate just double, double temperature.
That's how it works.
- Oh, no. Nothings happened.
- Or, use the microwave,
there's a microwave as well.
- Do you know why nothing's happened?
Cause it wasn't turned on.
- You've only got nine minutes left.
- Jay, it's not gonna happen,
but you might as well just crack on through, right?
Just make it regardless.
- The point is, that they were supposed to be cooked
before the end of the battle.
Now I have nine minutes.
- Baz is working with a dumping mix.
Gonna have to work quickly.
They need six minutes of boiling.
- I'm definitely outta my cover zone.
This feels wrong.
- Oh, what you doing?
I've gotta put the grill on that, mate.
- No you can't.
- Watch me.
- No!
No!
- I now need change setting on the oven,
which I had preheated well, before we started,
and changed the setting to grill
cause now I'm gonna grill the skin.
- Don't leave it open. just...
- You have to, it's a grill.
- Give the tea towel so I can get mine out.
- What's your problem?
- Time.
- You should have pressed the play button.
- Yes, on an oven.
- Yeah, its pretty backwards isn't it.
- Watch your back, Baz.
- Our meal packs app helps you become
an all cooking, food waste fighting,
cost hacking, friend impressing,
always learning, legendary whole cook.
- It also gets dinner on the table.
- There's three elements to my dish.
One is the bread panadas.
Who knows what's gonna happen to them?
The second is the succotash, that's good.
That's going.
The third is my broccoli.
I'm gonna cut this into small florets.
I'm gonna fry off in some oil
in a really hot frying pan.
Once broccoli's got a really nice char to it,
it's going into this bowl with
pesto, spring onions, garlic, feta
mixed all up served.
- Cheaty, cheaty budget time, Ebers.
My £1.25 per portion would not stretch
to an entire bag of flour, nor would it butter.
So whereas I would traditionally make a roux,
I'm using a pre bought tin of chicken soup.
It's delicious, it's thick,
and it's going straight in
with my mushrooms, my leeks and my garlic.
- And it's already seasoned. Worth saying
if you're making this at home,
and you've already got flour
and butter and you might have milk in the fridge,
you could basically make a roux and a vegetable oil
around this and it becomes almost free.
within the constraints of this challenge,
we wanted the boys to pay for everything they need.
So that's why the soup is a really good hack.
- And seeing as I have this jar
of mustard that you made me pay for the entirety of,
I'm using the teaspoon of mustard, as well.
- Last six minutes.
- I love dumplings when they are cooked
in a broth like that.
Luckily, they need six minutes to cook.
In that time, I'm going to peel my eggs
and also get my ham in there, as well.
- We're gonna ask you to plate
up all four portions today to prove that we're
getting four portions out of it.
Baz this looks like a nod to some of the sort
of spam ramen you can get in places like Japan.
- Yeah, this is tinned cooked ham.
Relatively cheap as a cut of meat.
But if you cut it thinly,
it works lovely in this dish.
You could also fry it as well to get some crisp edges,
but I haven't got time for that.
- There's always a bloody like pressure point for my dishes.
- So in theory, your vol-au-vent pie lid
should come off in one.
- [Mike] In theory, Ebbers, key phrase.
- Mike, there's a lot of smoke coming from your oven.
- [Mike] I hope not.
- Whoa.
- Crispy chicken.
- Lucky I'm here.
- Okay. You need to start thinking
about plating up. Last couple of minutes.
- This is what you call soft boiled egg.
Beautiful for dipping your soldiers in,
no for a bowl of broth.
- That's what we are looking for.
I've reduced it right down.
It's sloppy, it's delish,
and that's going into my pie.
- Everyone loves a pie.
It's proper comfort food,
almost as comforting as soup and dumplings.
- [Mike] What you talk about is more comforting Ebbers.
You've already made your mind up.
- I'm also a big fan
of the amount of veg that Jay's cramming in.
- [Mike] It's cause he hasn't got any empanadas to serve.
- Last 90 seconds.
- So I have just tipped a little bit of hot water
into the pan,
because I'm gonna make the most of this juice.
I'm gonna serve it in a little pot alongside,
as a sort of very cheaty gravy.
- Uh oh, the lids cracking, lids cracking.
Last 60 seconds.
- No one will know.
- [Ben] Jay, you need to get your bready things
out the oven.
Loads of fresh coriander, almost treated
as another vegetable.
There's so much going in.
You've bought the packet you're gonna use it all.
last 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Step away.
12 plates of food. Looking forward to tasting them all.
But first let's get 'em into the sexes.
- Yours look a lot less like bread than I expected.
(rock music plays)
- Boys. Yet again, real variety across
three very different everyday meals.
All right, you guys have got tastings on the side as well
but I'm gonna start with this one.
Straight off I'm gonna compliment you on your eggs.
The veg also cooked,
really liked the carrot, nice and soft.
The mushrooms, still big pieces
but nicely cooked, as is the spring green.
It's not kind of overcooked.
The dumplings are as you'd expect of
mushed together noodles.
They're a lot denser than a fluffy dumpling
but actually, three of them in the bowl here.
It's just about the right portion.
It's kind of nice.
It's a very different texture than I was expecting
but not in a bad way, just unusual.
- That is delicious.
I'm surprised at how flavoursome the broth is.
I wasn't expecting it to be that intense, great job.
- It's very comforting.
It's very wholesome.
This one, the classic kind of three
component parts to an everyday meal.
I like that.
Especially with how much veg is going on.
Really good use of those slices of Chorizo
in a number of different places.
Ooh and unlike this one,
which looks super comforting,
your plate, Jay, looks super inviting.
It's kind of colourful.
It's fresh.
It's got almost like a spring, summer vibe going on.
Even though the ingredients are mostly tinned,
and-or broccoli which I would associate
as a winter veg, but it looks really inviting.
- The feta broccoli amazing little mix.
- End result is really staggering.
- It gives you what you want.
- It tastes like bread.
- Experience-wise, it gives you what you want
without it having the effort of pastry.
- On their own as a little packed lunch
like filler, it's a really smart idea.
And again, using two ingredients, chorizo
and feta, that are already highly seasoned
and flavorful is kind of smart.
That's great, I love the technique of
the bread panadas.
I love the flavour of that succotash.
- The succotash is something that I'll take
into my cooking for sure.
Because that's so easy and so really delicious.
They are two dishes you don't wanna follow.
I'll be honest.
They are strong.
- And yet you're going to.
With a really hefty portion of pie,
and it's easy to look at it and think actually
what I really want is a whopping great big
side of like spring greens on the side.
But you forget just how much mushroom
and leek is inside of the pie.
That, that's basically a vegetable pie
with some chicken on the side.
Again, it looks kind of homely and wintery,
and yet it tastes
because of all the lemon juice, all of the lemons zest
and the mustard, really kind of zingy, actually.
And that sauce, the reduction, you did it right
at the end to pour over means
none of that chicken flavour goes to waste.
- Wonderful chicken flavour.
- Which is annoying cause normally
- There's a standout loser.
- Normally there's one that's a bit meh
and two fighting for first place.
I don't think we have that today.
We've got three standout dishes.
So I think you've got most surprising, arguably
most favourite comforting,
and perhaps most creative within the budget,
but there has to be a winner.
- You say there has to be a winner Ebbrell,
there has to be a third place, first.
- Oh does there?
- Yeah, we gotta do it
- In third place.
- Here we go. here we go.
- By literally the thickness
of a ramen instant noodle, it's that one.
- Did not see that coming.
- And whilst hugely wholesome and nicely balanced,
the only thing is the texture of those dumplings,
isn't sublime but it does deliver.
Which leaves these two to pick a winner from,
and today, best use of the five pounds,
I think goes to...
(suspenseful music plays)
I think it's gonna be Jamie.
- Oh yes.
- What was that?
- And again it's the conceptual idea of
the sandwiching of bread with filling,
and you can take that so many directions
and the two veggie sides,
even though one is full of cheese
and pesto as well.
Really, really good.
- Oh, I'm really happy with that.
- That's my decision but over to you guys,
comment down below which one would've taken your win,
and obviously tight constraints here,
but you could just take little tips and tricks
from each of them, create your own dishes, but we
will also publish these so you can give them a go.
Link's downstairs.
- Jay, just looking at the thighs.
- Okay.
- And my chicken's doing quite well as well.
Aye!