The competition is about to get serious as Knockout Week begins. At the end of this week only the best eight cooks will become semi-finalists. After four weeks of fierce competition only the 12 best cooks remain, and the battle is on as they come together for the first time. Their fate now rests on a daunting cook-off and one dish that they must design around briefs given by John and Gregg. John's brief asks for, 'a main course with true origin - it has a reason, a story, a reality - and must be a true and proper classic from any culture'. Gregg's pudding instruction is to 'make it thick, make it sticky and make it brown!' The cooks must each decide which brief to follow and deliver just one dish that stands out from the crowd and proves to judges that they have a future in the competition. Afterwards, John and Gregg choose the best nine chefs to go straight through to the next stage, leaving the weakest three to cook off again. In the most pressured hour of their lives, the three remaining chefs must cook their show-stopper dish in a fight for the two remaining places in the competition, knowing that nothing less that perfection is required to survive.