When contestants on a popular reality cooking competition accidentally ingest cooked human flesh during a challenge, the CSIs are brought in to investigate and track down the rest of the remains. After combing through piles of production trash, Greg and Morgan locate the rest of the body and are able to ID it as Derek Ellis, a recently eliminated contestant that was almost universally hated on set. Ellis was stabbed to death in the show kitchen after hours, chopped up, cooked, and then served to the remaining contestants in very elaborately crafted dishes, indicating that a skilled chef was responsible for his murder. Finlay and Nick begin to investigate the four remaining chef contestants on the show, but are unable to match potential motives to the available evidence.They do discover that a female contestant, Michelle Rowlands, was date raped by Ellis and another chef, Curtis LeBlanc. When LeBlanc's body is discovered in a walk-in freezer on the set, the CSIs firmly believe that Michelle killed both chefs to get revenge for the date rape, but the evidence doesn't support it. A break in the case comes when they discover that LeBlanc died from an allergic reaction to almonds, which he ingested via a carefully crafted sugar straw hidden inside his drinking cup. That sugar straw was crafted by the show's executive producer, Nadine Bradley, who killed Ellis and LeBlanc to get revenge for her sister, whom they had raped and killed while they were all in college.