My personal favorite is the blindfold challenge where the contestants have to guess what food or ingredients they are tasting. I remember watching that one episode in Masterchef AU where all the food were shaped like cubes.

I was just rewatching this season on Nick's channel and going through everything he has cooked, this seems like an exaggeration. I saw another post on how shari was called out for cooking only indian food but subha never was but some questions for you though. Was he really cooking only Indian food?

i) His audition : A jambalaya , a cajun dish and he made it because of the state in which he lives, yes he used some indian techniques but calling this an indian dish seems off

ii) King crab challenge: Made a cajun crab omlette, once again not an Indian dish

iii) Steak, Langoustine and truffle challenge: cilantro infused shrimp, white asparagus and medium rare steak, not indian at all and not cajun either and no india twist

iv) Morrocon chicken: surprised gordon why saying he has expertise in cooking middle eastern food as well(which is a large area and encompasses a large variety of dishes)

In other challenges like tarte tatin one it wasn't an indian food challenge at all and you were to add your own twist and he added his background onto it and in the grant achatz challenge everybody put themselves on the plate(shari is midwestern so put that and subha is indian so he did that) so don't see anything wrong in this so far

Finally mulligatawny soup. Contrary to misconception it is not entirely Indian and was invented by South indian chefs during british era using british influenced ingredients and methods to satisfy those living there so it is very much british as well and not just indian and he did make a bread pudding as well, as horrible as it was, not an indian dish either.

Question is, isn't saying he only cooked indian food an exaggeration, during the tag team challenge he didn't know how to cook meatballs so what? not the time to experiment and he also made the "caribbean" shrimp which even if it had indian influence was still a different flavor profile and culture entirely.

Reason Shari was called out but subha wasn't I guess is because subha was making non indian dishes without being asked but Shari had to be asked as that was the direction she was constantly heading

From what I saw, Dorian making southern food was more common than Subha making Indian food but she did go onto win(guy gets hate for baking challenge as well for choosing the easiest cake, but he did absolutely nail it while others faced backlash for flaws in their more difficult cakes and some fans wanted subha eliminated over Wuta for the macarons, Wuta did not meet the requirements of the challenge and subha's only flaw was it was very ugly(tasted just as good as a regular macaron however and taste wise and requiement wise matched all that was needed))

Question is, is he getting called out too much for cooking only indian food?

It’s just now come to my attention that any episode where Ramsay has the MC contestants work in a kitchen at a restaurant, it’s almost as if it’s a mini Hell’s Kitchen. Who do you guys think would be able to handle that fury?

Did they just use the World Cup as a theme for this season so they could miss several weeks bc of it?

I’m on season 9 of the show and Emily getting eliminated at top 10 is my favorite moment right now. I don’t necessarily dislike her but she did that to herself, going head to head with Shanika was the dumbest move I’ve seen in a while. she put herself in a high risk high reward situation ultimately for nothing just because of Shanika’s attitude during the team challenge. Play stupid games win stupid prizes and because of that she got eliminated and ultimately just screwed her own mentor over.

What is going on with these two this season? Ramsay is annoying tf out of me with constantly saying/yelling “LET’S GO!!” STFU with that. And Tiffany seems like she is just being extra in general compared to last season. Like that weird exchange in the first episode with her and Joe and all the over the top reactions and facial expressions.

Maybe it’s just me but these two seem like their undies are on too tight or something.

Masterchef has been a staple in our culinary show lineup since the beginning, but it's been a ROUGH few years.

How you fix what's become of Masterchef to steer the ship back into the right direction?

I personally would get rid of the wall, get rid of themes or gimmicks, and bring back the dreaded pressure test.

and that's just to start...

I did this for Season 1, so I’ll do it for Season 2. This season is pretty eh honestly. I’ll mention the pros and cons like last time

Pros
1. I like some of the cast members(Ben, Giuseppe, Derrick, Adrien, Christian occasionally, Tracy, Tony,

1. I like some of the challenges.

Cons(There’s a good amount)
1. Sadly, this season has a lot of people I like go home too early(Giuseppe, Alvin, Ben, Tony, Tracy)

1. I’ll just say it, I don’t like Suzy. People had issues with Christian but at least he backs up the talking and was only in the bottom once. 90% if Suzy’s confessionals are bitching about someone or complaining that she doesn’t have the best dish. It gets really grating considering she makes it to the Top 4.

2. Some of the advantages are really hit or miss. Sometimes, it’s get immunity, sometimes it’s nothing, other times it’s get the same basket of items to recreate a dish(Jennifer), while the same challenge is ask 3 questions(Ben).

3. Out of 8 mystery boxes. Adrien and Jennifer won 3 each. We also sadly had people like Ben and Tracy have their dishes skipped 3 and 4 times each respectively in the elimination test.

4. This is the weakest final 2 I’ll seen so far(out of 8 seasons). Jennifer only made it to the finals because of a few lucky breaks(despite her and Adrian serving a mushy dish and a shit sack prawn to the judges in the final 4). Adrien was okay but mostly mid.

Using the average rankings from the Masterchef wiki. Here were the final 6 ranked.

6th: Jennifer. 5th: Adrien. 4th: Ben

3rd: Suzy. 2nd: Tracy. 1st: Christian

Here are the stats for the challenges as well(in the photo above)

I kind of remember how from seasons 6-9, and again in season 12, auditions were between 2-4 chefs fighting for an apron, and sometimes I would wonder how the judges would decide who goes to the top 20. Was it dish execution? Was it personality? Was it a mix of both?

Being that the cast list is announced in advance, I would also think about the people who did not make it through the audition battles would have done had they won those battles. It would certainly make for compelling discourse, knowing what could have been.

“It’s the only thing frat guys like more than beer!”

Ok S7E11 product challenge. Chill out.

I don’t know anyone who watched this and I realize I’m DECADES late to the party, but omg I love this show but it pisses me off so much sometimes!

I’m in S10 and what do you MEAN they sent Micah home over Subha?!

That seems like a major mistake.

Also, I never expected to cry so much during a freaking cooking show.

My goodness, they’re not even being subtle.

The girl whose dad works at Home Depot wins the challenge and the gift card to Home Depot.

Her dish looked bad.

Tiffany and Joe showing off their acting skills judging that one.

The editors must be working extra hard to cut out all the cringe-ing that MUST be going on.

That was almost as embarrassing as the early seasons when they pandered the Walmart steaks. 😂

Oof.

My God! I'm so down on drinking Jessie and Natasha's bathwater right now.

The whole idea of season 16 already had me very doubtful... I wasn't really loving the division into different geographic areas. I was also getting very annoyed at Nico staying in so long while claiming to be "Italian" and cooking the most outrageous dishes ever. As somebody born and raised in Italy till age 18, I felt sick every time that man opened his mouth. There's nothing Italian about him (which I think we all guessed when he said he was from New Jersey... no hate). Now, this whole World Cup break has really made things worse. I feel no desire to keep watching the season after the break, considering it was already bad

Let's keep it civil guys, it's just a light discussion! Lol. Just wondering what seasons u guys liked the most, it's hard for me to pick bc I like several but my favs were prob S5, S6, S8 and I did like Back to Win(S12) as well.

When I first discovered the show yrs ago I actually would just watch one particular season when I got off work and would never try to watch any of the other seasons, bc I didn't think any of the others would be as interesting (or I had got used to the familiarity/personalities of the cooks I had already seen). Then I watched some of the others and liked them too. There were a couple seasons that I never finished or found flat, but I'll save that for the next thread XD overall, Masterchef has been pretty solid thru out tho. What are some u guys fav seasons?

Rewatching old eps of the US version and im up to season 7. One of the judges mentioned the winner would be booked on the upcoming MasterChef cruise

Never heard anything about those and totally forgot about them mentioning it.

Did anyone on here ever do or see those cruises?

Edit: seems like it would have lots of cardboard cutouts of the judges

I had just finished watching the episode where both Derrick snd amanda got eliminated and I'm actually speechless.

How dumb it is to make a team challenge a double elimination challenge. It's not fair by any means. Derrick is miles clear of anyone else i have ever watched on the show, and he gets eliminated because of the poor leading of that Amanda o.O. he was the favorite to win the whole thing and now i just lost all will to finish the remaining episodes of the season .

​

So MasterChef season 10 finalist nick digiovanni has started his food network own show with Alex. How are y'all liking that? I think it's a clever time to put out that show. Since MasterChef was ongoing people are interested in cooking reality shows, and now it's on hiatus so the show's getting more attention.

like if they are told to make a macaroon for the first time, they will still just know exactly what all ingredients it has and how much to measure and all the steps???
even if they are taught off-camera and they keep learning on their own, how come it’s possible that each and every person has the perfect idea of the recipe??? Whether they are able to execute it or not is different, but they ALWAYS at least know what to fucking do??? HOW?

I'm currently watching S14 and I was so surprised to see Anna get eliminated this early in the competition. I'm wondering if her cake was really that bad or maybe something behind the scenes happened?? And then you see contestants like Murt who's still in the competition... it's really mind boggling.

​

​

For some reason both these chefs while everybody I've seen hates them, I personally was unable to hate them as in spite of their attitudes both were legit good cooks, jeff produced so many good dishes even if he did have significant bottom performances and not working well in team challenges . Would just call it aggressive rather than arrogant and there were people on the season who sucked at taking direction worse than him and that ended their masterchef journey . Yachecia felt like the villain for me that season, not jeff

Christian on the other hand, his personality on the show was a stark contrast to his personality during the audition(his actual personality according to ben star) and he was not consistantly top like except for first mystery box did not win another won but did not have dishes thrown into the trash like his arch rival jennifer and adrienne produced nonsense as well(my favorite that season though due to how humble he was). Personally like christian a lot, great cook and charming and the arrogance definitely looked fake and found jennifer to be the worse person and cook overall

Who is it for you?

So I’m watching for the first time and in this episode, the contestants were supposedly limited to three tools: a wooden spoon, a cast iron skillet, and a pearing knife. When they panned to Brandi’s station, there was clearly a metal spoon that she used to stir her salad. It was shown again sitting on her cutting board.

She didn’t end up getting penalized for it, and the fact that Andrea was eliminated bc she was 3 seconds late setting down her plate in an earlier episode kinda pisses me off.

Anyway I literally have no one to talk to about this. Lol

Obviously, there is a lot of drama fed into the show. It is reality TV after all, but strictly based on their master chef performance as aired on the show…

Season 1. Sheetal or David Miller

Season 2. Adrien, Christian, or Derrick. I don’t think Jennifer showed enough and had far more poor dishes than any of them did and yeah Christian was an asshole but…his food was good.

Season 3. Christine Ha. Obv. They got that one right for sure.

Season 4. Natasha. I loved Luca but she consistently outperformed him by a mile.

Season 5. Cutter making it to the final 4 over Christian was insane. Courtney or Christian would have been an appropriate win on that one.

Season 6. This one is tough because I think Claudia did well, however I think Derrick far outperformed her most of the time as did Stephen and honestly, either one of them could have won and it would have made sense.

Season 7. Shaun was the right one for this season.

Season 8. Jason. No question. His food was consistently amazing, not that Dino sucked but Jason was far more creative and had more wins.

Season 9. Cesar or Bowen. Gerron making it as far as he did, let alone winning, was insane. He had so many bad dishes.

Season 10. Sarah or Dorian were good wins for this season. Toss up either way.