Crowning Every Winner From The 11th Wholesome Week Of ‘MasterChef’
We're so close to the finales, you can almost taste it (like a delicious meal).
It’s the penultimate week of MasterChef! Six people will head into Finals Week and two people will be very, very sad. I hate this for us!
Let’s hand out some awards!
Worst Luck – The Producers of MasterChef
In a case of unbelievably bad luck, MasterChef kicked off another big touristy week, prancing around outdoors in a location where everyone was trapped in their homes. That’s right, as we watched the contestants stand in front of Uluru, the Northern Territory was experiencing its first COVID lockdown. Truly incredible timing. At this point, I’m glad there are no more travel weeks to come, because they feel like they’re cursed.
Sorry to everyone in the NT who had to watch these bastards stand outside in glorious weather for hours and hours while they were stuck in their homes.
The Scene Stealer Award For Sneaking Into Every Shot – Flies
Let’s give it up for flies! You’ve gotta hustle if you wanna make it in show biz, and flies know it. They got in the faces of every contestant in every shot of the opening, making people flap their arms around and pull weird faces, ensuring that no-one looked hotter than them. They’re sabotage queens and I’m here for it. I heard they all got talent scouted and they’re gonna have their own Netflix reality show. Get it, flies.
Did Justin just cop a fly in the face or is he giving god a little smooch? Who can say!
Most Likely To Be Fine Dining Somehow – Pub Food
In Monday’s challenge, the contestants split into two teams for a service challenge, being asked to create a three-course fine dining menu. While the orange team went down a more traditional path of actually designing a fine dining menu, as requested, the yellow team went a little more rustic, including a main meal that was fully a steak with onion rings. Jock and Andy weren’t having a bar of it.
Get you two men who look at you like Jock and Andy look at Justin after they’ve been told he’s serving them an onion ring, provided your kink is having men stare at you with a mix of incredulity and heartbreak.
Most Dummy Thicc – The Orange Team’s Pannacotta
If there’s one thing we’ve been told time and time again on MasterChef, it’s that a good pannacotta should have a jiggle to it. You can give it a little prod and it’ll wiggle away like it’s giving you a private sensual dance. The orange team’s pannacotta, overseen by Depinder, wasn’t dancing for nobody.
Hoo boy, this pannacotta was built like a brick shithouse. This pannacotta was so thick, you could have used it as waterproof grouting for your shower. Truly a tragic end to what had been a great cook for the orange team, and it sent four of our favourites right into an elimination challenge.
I’m no pannacotta expert, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be able to pick it up like that.
Quandong Queen – Rayleen Brown
On Tuesday, special guest Rayleen Brown came by to set a native ingredients cook for the defeated orange team. It’s a super interesting challenge, and it’s very cool to see Indigenous Australian ingredients being featured more frequently on MasterChef over the last few years. Not only did she bring a fantastic array of ingredients for the contestants to work with, she also had a super cute necklace made out of quandongs, and I love to see fashion that matches the theme of the day. Huge Ms Frizzle vibes.
This would also be my facial expression if Melissa Leong complimented me on my jewellery/touched my jewellery/looked even vaguely in my direction
Teacher’s Pet – Pete
The challenge for the day was to incorporate Indigenous Australian ingredients into your dish, and Pete showed absolutely everyone up by going ham and deciding to only use the native ingredients in his dish — nothing else. It’s a tricky thing to do, given these contestants don’t have much experience with these foods, but Pete being Pete, he pulled it off, doing something fancy with bits of kangaroo and a purée.
Pete leaves the NT a changed man, committed to making even weirder, wetter salads in the future
Least Likely To Go Home But Somehow Is Going Home??? – Depinder
Sorry, what? No. This really isn’t allowed. I was so sure Depinder was going to be in the finale of this thing, and she’s not? Seems fake.
Depinder put up a truly gorgeous-looking tomato salad with gazpacho and a warrigal greens damper, but sadly, the judges reckon it doesn’t showcase the native ingredients well enough, so it’s her time to go. I dunno. I’m still holding out hope that MasterChef will do a Drag Race and just bring Depinder back next week, unexplained, hiding in a pile of trash.
All of us attempting to smile through the pain of Depinder leaving, hoping this is all some sort of horrible prank.
Most Adorable – Tommy
On Wednesday, the contestants are back in the MasterChef kitchen, and there are now so few of them that they get a whole bench to themselves. Tommy is delighted by this and yells out, “There’s so much room for activities!” And then the judges laugh and say, “What activities?”, because I guess they are normal, well-adjusted people who haven’t watched Step Brothers fifty times. But I am not one of those normal, well-adjusted people, Tommy, and I appreciate both the reference and the general enthusiasm! It’s very cute!
hear the winner of this challenge gets to go to the Catalina Wine Mixer.
Most Superfluous Farmer – Farmer John
Wednesday’s challenge is a mystery box, and this week it’s an everything box – the contestants have to use every single ingredient in there, rather than picking out one or two to highlight. They lift the lids on a set of six ingredients and it seems like pretty standard mystery box fare. A meat, some other bits – we all know the drill.
There’s a milk, an onion. We know these guys. It’s fine.
But then the judges alert the contestants that that’s not all they will be cooking with. There’s a SEVENTH ingredient! What could it be?! Some weird and wonderful item that will make this challenge a living hell?! The kitchen doors burst open and a man walks in who we are told is a farmer named John, and he has brought them some purple cauliflower!
..cool? I’m not really sure why they needed to bring in a guy to announce the purple cauliflower? It’s a neat veg, but it’s not that wild. I’ve seen it at Coles, which I suppose is the point, ‘cause Farmer John’s carrying the cauliflower in a big box what has “Coles” written on the front of it. Go off, Farmer John, I guess. You grow a good cauliflower. Congrats, man.
The Crafternoon Award For Trying Something New – Pete
Pete decided that he wanted to hero the purple cauliflower by reconstructing his lamb dish to look like a purple cauliflower. The judges looked at him with a touch of scepticism, but Pete was very sure of his plan, doing a lot of hand movements to indicate how round and three-dimensional the “cauliflower” was going to be, with the leaves coming out of the bottom. What Pete plated up, however, was more like a ring of cauliflower leaves with some cauliflower purée plopped in the middle. I’m sure it was lovely to eat, but all I can see when I look at this is what I think it would look like if someone sawed the top off of Frankenstein’s monster’s head and you peeked down at the gooey brains inside.
This is your brain when you’re brought to life by a very unethical scientist and some lightning. (Is that what happens in Frankenstein? I haven’t read it and I refuse to look it up)
Best Nose In The Biz – Linda
Thursday’s immunity challenge was a high-stakes affair, as the winner would become the first contestant to make it through to Finals Week. The kitchen was set up as a lucky dip of rows and rows of cloches. Hiding underneath was a selection of ingredients, equipment and types of cuisine. The contestants had to pick two, which they would then have to combine into a dish.
Linda was first off the rank to make her choices, and she set about sniffing at all of the cloches like some kind of bloodhound or truffle hunting hog, trying to figure out where the good stuff was at. And it worked! Linda sniffed out something that smelled citrusy and ended up with preserved lemon and lemon verbena, which she used to make an incredible duck banquet that took her straight into Finals Week.
Biggest Gambler – Justin
Justin goes into his lucky dip saying that he wants the hibachi, which is the most insane thing I have ever heard in my life. It’s an act of sabotage that hibachi is even under one of the cloches and it should be avoided at all costs. Somehow, though, Justin is magically drawn to the hibachi for his first pick and he gets what he wants.
For his second pick, he reveals Italian, which isn’t the greatest match for a hibachi, but truly what is? What cuisine goes well with “burning the everloving shit out of everything that touches it”? I have no idea, but I tell you what – it’s not dessert, which is what Justin ends up swapping his Italian pick for. What a nightmare.
(Justin attempts to hide himself under the cloche so he doesn’t have to make a dessert that also showcases the hibachi)
It looks real bad for Justin, but not impossible. Sure, hibachi and dessert don’t naturally go together, but there are desserts where some smokiness makes sense! You could do a play on s’mores or you could… Oh, nope. Looks like Justin went for burning some oranges and then making a granita with them. Jesus Christ.
Some oranges having just the worst day.
The correct face to make when someone tells you they are making a granita out of burnt oranges
Most Relatable – Jock
Sunday is an elimination challenge, which is a very high-stress scenario and I hated every minute of watching it, except for this shining moment where Jock revealed that he does not exercise. My dude, I also love to house huge amounts of food and not go to the gym. We should hang out.
Pretty sure Jock is only running here because Justin has some snacks in his hands and he wants them.
Most Excited – Melissa Leong
I’m switching up Mel’s award for this week because it was absolutely delightful to see how excited she got when she heard Tommy was making bun bo hue, or BBH, in the elimination challenge. Mel’s enthusiasm for food is infectious, and it’s heart-warming to see how much her joy means to the contestants when they’re cooking cuisine from their heritage. I have no jokes here. It’s just really friggin beautiful and makes me do little cries every time it happens.
Mel WAS the best dressed this week, though. I mean, COME ON. Look at this polka dot vision!
The ‘I Hate This’ Award for All My Favourite Contestants Are Going Home And I Hate It And I’m Going To Have A Huge Tantrum About It – Tommy
It was bad enough that Depinder went home this week, but Tommy too?! Have they no mercy?! Tommy has been such a strong cook the whole way through the competition and really seemed like he was hitting his stride in the last couple of weeks. He was whistling while he cooked, making jokes, and putting up incredible food. He shouldn’t be going home and there must have been some sort of terrible mistake. Bring him back. Bring Depinder back. Bring them all back. Let MasterChef season 13 go for 100 weeks. Did I mention that I hate this?
Tommy is the sweetest angel of them all and if Ten knows what they’re doing, they’ve already given him a cooking show.
Next week…
It’s Finals Week! It’s all coming to an end! I’m not emotionally prepared! Hold me!