Why Bobby Flay Struggled With This Italian Classic On Beat Bobby Flay

The Food Network show "Beat Bobby Flay" has been pitting the celebrity chef against competitors in cooking showdowns since 2013. In each episode, Flay and his opponent have just 45 minutes to cook the rival chef's signature dish before judges decide which is better. Over the series' dozens of seasons, Flay has had to cook all kinds of cuisines and meals. But out of all of them, it was lasagna that he struggled with the most.

Flay revealed that the classic Italian dish posed the biggest challenge for him when responding to questions about his namesake show on his Instagram Story. When a follower asked about the hardest dish he'd ever made in the 45 minutes, he named lasagna, explaining that it was because he made the pasta himself, cooked the sauce from scratch, and baked individual servings. In fact, during the Season 5 episode, when Scottsdale, Arizona, chef Gio Osso names lasagna as his signature dish that they'll both be cooking, Flay incredulously asks, "45 minutes?"

Flay made his lasagna with a bacon bolognese sauce, béchamel sauce, parsley oregano oil, and some heat from Calabrian chiles, and served it in six single-sized baking dishes. Osso's lasagna had spinach pasta, which was handmade like Flay's, a cured meat bolognese sauce, béchamel, and prosciutto cotto, which is similar to ham. He served it untraditionally as rolled-up pieces. In the end, the judges liked Flay's lasagna better, and he won the competition with his toughest dish of the series.

Bobby Flay's lasagna difficulties and questioning at first how it could be done in 45 minutes is understandable, since making it from scratch usually takes a lot longer. The pasta dough has to be made, rolled out, and cut into wide strips. Bolognese sauce can simmer for hours. There are different opinions about whether béchamel sauce or ricotta is the proper filling for lasagna, but if you're using béchamel as both Flay and his competitor did, that has to be made, too. Finally, it takes time to layer the lasagna (which Italians have a genius way of doing), and then it has to cook in the oven.

The lasagna win wasn't just a testament to Flay's skills because it was the hardest dish he's ever made in the 45 minutes allowed. It was also a pasta dish, which his former Food Network chef colleague Giada De Laurentiis has said is one of his weak spots, along with desserts. The victory was one of the 65% to 70% of the show's wins that Flay has notched, although he lost the very first episode's chicken parmigiana challenge.

Some online posters have claimed that "Beat Bobby Flay" competitions are fake. But one Redditor who went to a taping said all of the cooking time limits and dishes are identical to how they're presented on the show. (This is what it's really like to be in the "Beat Bobby Flay" audience). The poster said the only difference was that there would be long pauses for editing when they taped conversations.