‘Hell’s Kitchen: Battle of the Ages’: Chefs Battle in Blindfold Taste Test in Exclusive Clip

Hell’s Kitchen returns with a new episode tonight, and things are getting very saucy. PopCulture.com obtained an exclusive clip of the new episode that features the chefs taking part in a blindfold taste test competition. One chef from the red team and one chef from the blue team are blindfolded while wearing headphones. Each chef takes a bite out of certain food and has to guess what it is. If the answer is wrong, a chef from their team gets sauce dumped on them.

“Chefs will face the ultimate test of their individual pallets in the 21st annual blind taste test challenge,” the official synopsis states. “Then, Eric McCormack (Will & Grace), and Justin Turner (professional baseball player) attend the dinner service for their respective charities in the all-new “21st Annual Blind Taste Test” episode of Hell’s Kitchen airing Thursday, Jan. 12 (8:00-9:01 PM ET/PT) on FOX.”

Hell’s Kitchen is in its 21st season and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has been with the show since it first aired in 2005. The current team is subtitled Battle of the Ages, meaning “well-seasoned 40-year-olds will battle against fresh up-and-coming 20-somethings,” according to the official season synopsis. The winner of the season gets a head Chef position and a cash prize of $250,000. Hell’s Kitchen: Battle of the Ages is produced by ITV America’s ITV Entertainment in association with A. Smith & Co. Productions, Inc. Ramsay is an executive producer along with Arthur Smith, Kent Weed, Kenny Rosen and Bernie Schaeffer.

Chef Alex Blew is a part of Hell’s Kitchen: Battle of the Ages and spoke to Guilty Eats in November about cooking for Ramsay. “Man, it’s very surreal. I mean, the first three days I’d think I was probably in a coma, like this was just some sort of medically induced dream that I was having. It felt so, so wild to just look around. You know, a couple days before that I was in my restaurant in Murfreesboro. And now I’m standing on this platform in front of Gordon and Christina and Jason with these 17 other contestants and all these cameras and it just feels… it doesn’t feel like real life. It’s just such a wild… He’s such a presence.”