Padma Lakshmi says “Americas Culinary Cup” is her biggest professional swing, and the show’s finale airs next week. The host, who spent 19 seasons steering “Top Chef,” is pitching the new competition as a cleaner, fairer test of cooking — one that does not try to trip the chefs before they even begin.

“So many of these competition shows are designed to thwart or put obstacles in the chef’s way, by not giving them all the best equipment or having them have to fight for ingredients,” Lakshmi said. “There’s always someone who gets the bum stove with a hot spot or whatever. I just didn’t want that.”

That philosophy shaped the kitchen on “America’s Culinary Cup.” The chefs were given quail eggs and pheasant, every protein they could want, all organic spices from Burlap & Barrel and obscure spices usually missing from mainstream markets. Lakshmi said she kept thinking about what had frustrated her over years of watching food competitions, even while she was away from the set: “I’d be at the gym, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, that [aspect] used to bug me — what if we didn’t do that?’”

The contrast with her earlier work is deliberate. Lakshmi said “Taste the Nation” carried an agenda and reflected one person’s point of view — hers — while “Culinary Cup” gives that point of view squarely to the competitors. In the saucier episode, Diana Davila got bechamel, and Lakshmi said the Mexican chef “decolonized it” by not using wheat flour. That kind of challenge, she suggested, lets the food speak more than the format.

For Lakshmi, the shift also marks a turn in how she presents herself on screen. “For so many years, before I did ‘Taste the Nation,’ there was just one way people saw me on the red carpet,” she said. “The only way I can tell the years apart at the Emmys is by the dress.” But she said that image does not fully match her life or work: “But that rarefied image of me is, in my mind, not really accurate.”

Jewelry, she said, has long been part of that public image — and part of what she keeps for herself. Lakshmi said, “I’ve always had an affinity for jewelry,” adding that “women buy jewelry to have talismans. It’s very sentimental.” She said she has “some very select pieces I’ve amassed over the years,” including a cocktail ring from the 1960s she wore in the finale and a topaz necklace she bought in India 20 to 25 years ago for the saucier challenge. She described the necklace as having “sharp oval stones,” a detail that fits the same instinct she brought to the show: choosing carefully, then letting the work stand on its own.

The finale next week closes a gamble that Lakshmi has openly called her biggest professional swing. It also answers the question behind the project: whether a competition show built to remove the usual gimmicks can still generate drama. Lakshmi’s answer is already on the screen. She gave the chefs better tools, better ingredients and a fairer shot, and let the competition come from the cooking.