In this exclusive preview, we see our amateur cooks tasked with making a dish of steak and potatoes in under an hour. Sounds easy – but first they have to butcher a side of beef to carve out the cuts they want to use in their dishes. “Meat fabrication,” as it’s known in the industry, is a skill that takes lots of practice to master. But contestants Ryan Dishman, a software salesman from Denver, and Derek Finocchiaro, a robotics engineer from Edgewater, N.J., have to tackle it for the first time on TV. Because it’s Top Chef Amateurs, each gets guidance from his Top Chef vet sous chef (Tiffany Derry for Dishman and Jen Carroll for Finocchario), but otherwise it’s down to how well he wields his knife on the fly. Tune in tomorrow night to see what judges Gail Simmons, Isaac Toups and Richard Blais think of the results.
