“This is Top Chef, not Top Scallop”

While watching Top Chef last night, some people got into a heated debate of how many times Jamie has made scallops this season, and if that amount of scallops was too much. Never having had scallops myself, I can’t really comment on their validity or if cooking with them too much would be a bad thing to do. But what I can do confidently (after some careful research of every episode’s recap), is tell you how many times Jamie has worked with scallops so far:

3 times*.

Out of the eight episodes, Jamie has cooked scallops in two of the episodes, but for both the quick fire AND elimination challenge on one night. That means if you watch any episode from this season so far, there is a 25% chance that Jamie will be working with scallops at least once. That percentage does seem quite high.

On the other hand, out of the 16 quickfire/elimination challenges that have so far occurred, if you take the three instances of scallop into account, there is only a 18.75% chance per challenge that Jamie will have scallops on her menu. This makes things seem a little less scallop-y.

So now the mystery is solved and everyone can go back to enjoying Leah and Hosea’s canoodling, Stefan’s ego, Fabio’s cute accent and Carla’s facial expressions instead of worrying about the number of mollusks being cooked.


*Notes:
The number 3 was reached through careful perusal of Top Chef season 5 episode recaps by yours truly. Each episode recap was browsed until both dishes Jamie cooked for that night were found and recorded. The findings are listed below:

Episode 1: Premiere!
Quick Fire: Cutting apples/etc.
Elimination Challenge: Pan roasted sea bass and eggplant puree with wile arugula salad

Episode 2: Getting Crafty at Craft
Quick Fire: Hot Dog Challenge
Elimination Challenge: Chilled Corn Soup

Episode 3: Thanksgiving at Foo Fighters
Quick Fire: Deconstructed Falafel Soup
Elimination Challenge: Corn Salad and Wax Beans

Episode 4: Today Show
Quick Fire: Amuse Bouche! - Egg on toast dish
Elimination Challenge: TV demo - A frisee salad with a duck egg (that does not set!)

Episode 5: Gail’s Bridal Shower
Quick Fire: Identifying the ingredients in a dish by tasting it
Elimination Challenge: Cooking for the Bridal shower. Jamie’s team is something borrowed, Jamie makes a carrot puree.

Episode 6:The 12 Days of Christmas
Quick Fire: SCALLOP on a potato-kale stew
Elimination Challenge: 7 swans a swimming: SCALLOP “swimming” in vichyssoise

Episode 7: Focus Group
Quick Fire: stone fruit Napoleon
Elimination Challenge: SCALLOPS with fennel and orange

Episode 8: Down on the Farm
Quick Fire: Bruschetta
Elimination Challenge: Chicken team, no scallops here.