Food Network serves up Thanksgiving 'Chopped'

For those of you who want to whet your appetite before gorging yourselves this Turkey Day, Food Network is serving up a heaping helping of "Chopped."

The show pits chefs against one another in a competition to make the most appetizing dish with surprising and often bizarre ingredients. Their Thanksgiving episode, premiering tonight, will carry a Thanksgiving theme says judge Amanda Freitag.

"The Thanksgiving episode is one of my favorites," Freitag said. "It's really hard, because everybody always has these things that they make, and there's not any deviation. We're asking them to take this basket filled with 'something' and get creative with it. Also, as we all know, Thanksgiving dinner takes, like, two days to prepare, and here (the time allotted) doesn't even add up to two hours."

She continued, "They have 20 minutes to impress those of us who are judges but have competed ourselves. They're definitely working hard for that $10,000. I've competed on 'Chopped,' and I've been chopped. I know what it feels like."

As for the traditional Thanksgiving feast, the celebrity chef and past competitor says you can't beat the classics. "I'm looking forward to making all those kind of cheesy, old-school classics with a twist. I take that green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and fried onions on top, but I make all of it from scratch, or I make sweet potatoes, but instead of marshmallows, I put something else sweet on top," she said.

Hopefully she makes enough for everyone.