Crowning Every Winner From The Sixth Wholesome Week Of ‘MasterChef’

We’re back again for week six of MasterChef! The competition’s getting tight and it’s getting sadder every time someone has to leave, so we better give out some awards to cheer everyone up – stat!

Most Hopped Up On Bean Juice – Brent

Monday saw the return of the Invention Test — a beloved challenge where the contestants must not only make something delicious, they must also make it needlessly complicated. This time, they’ve gotta take a humble vegetable: carrot, potato, onion, zucchini or broccoli — and turn it into something fun, and we hear the obligatory hum of “A vegetable?! What would I even do with that?!” despite seeing the contestants cook a wide variety of veg in complex ways all season.

Brent busts into the room, eyes wild, because he chugged down a latte for the first time in his life and now must tell everyone how wired it’s got him. It’s like the opposite of when you get drunk for the first time and can’t stop telling everyone how you actually feel totally fine and it’s like it doesn’t affect you at all.

Brent seems to react to caffeine a little different to the rest of us, because it causes him to be unable to think about anything other than how much his wife loves honey carrots. He decides to turn the concept of honey and carrots into a dessert, and although the judges impress upon him that it’s not a wild enough concept, he does it anyway. And that’s coffee’s fault somehow. Probably best to lay off the hot bean water for the rest of the season, bud.

Best Reinvention Of Straight-Up Just Chips and Dip – Sabina 

You can’t fool me, Sabina. This bitch knows a chippie when she sees one and you bloody did it. You straight-up made potato chips.

Sabina’s initial idea of ‘potato skins what look like an egg’ was deemed not inventive enough by the judge overlords, and so with some quick thinking, she changed up her dish to make a savoury mille feuille. This sounds very fancy and tricks you into thinking it’s inventive when actually, what has in fact happened here is she’s put down some chips, popped some dip on top of them, and then done another layer of chips. It looks delicious, but let’s not pretend it’s something it’s not.

Least Impressed By Dad Jokes – Tom

Tom made an incredibly beautiful carrot dessert that looked like a sunny-side up egg, complete with a frozen carrot juice yolk perched on the top. It was very intricate and impressive, so of course Jock decided the best way to respond to its presentation was to bellow, “You’ve gotta be yolking!” The judges all had a good laugh, but Tom has some self-respect and remained unmoved.

Cutest cakes – Depinder

Depinder decided to put onion in a cake and it turned out wonderfully because she is Depinder and can do no wrong. Her trio of tiny curry cakes looked absolutely delightful. Upon seeing them, Andy declared that curry cake was a “pretty whack idea”, which made him sound like he’d walked onto set directly from the early 2000s in more ways than one. But he absolutely loved them, as did the other judges.

Kinkiest Guest Chef – Clinton McIver

Tuesday’s Pressure Test was set by Clinton McIver, who asked the contestants to make his very famous dish of old lamb with flowers on it. But he wasn’t going to let them just look at the dish and see how it was put together. No, no, no. The contestants would have to put on blindfolds to experience the dish and then try to figure out what it looked like for themselves.

They always say that you can tell the best chefs because they can figure out what a dish looks like by splashing their little fingies about in pools of sauce and tentatively groping a hunk of lamb like they were touching a boob for the first time. Wait. Hang on. No, I’m hearing that’s not a good judge of a chef’s skill at all. Apologies.

Unluckiest Pants – Eric

Eric came into the cook wearing his lucky pants, but even they could not save him this time.

Eric’s goose was cooked the second he cut off all the skin and fat from his lamb. To be fair, I would have done the same thing. The recipe said to cut off the excess fat, and ALL that skin and fat should be excess. That stuff’s nasty. In fact, I would go further, and take the whole chunk of meat outside and bury it in the MasterChef garden under a particularly nice tree, where perhaps other lambs could visit and pay their respects.

Unfortunately it was an error that Eric could not recover from, and he was banished from the competition, never to return…for a few days, because all the eliminated contestants are coming back for a second chance next week.

Bougiest – Every Contestant on Wednesday 

Lurking under Wednesday’s Mystery Box was not a collection of ingredients, but a bunch of cooking equipment. “How are they going to make food out of these?!” I said to myself. “This is truly the most diabolical challenge they’ve ever been set! I can’t wait to see someone make a wooden spoon-flavoured ice-cream or a whisk granita or a tongs-flavoured ice-cream!” 

But no, the challenge was simply that the contestants would have to make their dish using ONLY the equipment on their bench – a pot, a bowl, an oven tray and some other basics – and none of the fancy stuff in the storage cupboard. They would have to cook – GULP! – like a normal person at home who has to use a pot and then wash it ‘cause that’s their only good pot.

And oh, boy, for a bunch of home cooks, they really didn’t like this. Six weeks in the MasterChef kitchen has transformed them from humble peasants into full-on French dukes made of soft cheese. It’s like watching a time-lapse of the concept of gentrification and its consequences, and I’m here for it.

Most Lost – Justin

While a few people struggled with the concept of cooking with regular equipment, Justin was hit the hardest. For the first half of the challenge, it felt like we were watching him wander aimlessly across a desert, murmuring the words “stick blender” to himself over and over again. The dude simply could not think of a dish that he could make that did not involve being blitzed up by mechanical blades. In the end, he cooked a quail and served it with, uh…celery and, um…some pickled grapes?

Justin knew he was in for a bad time when he presented his dish to the judges, but I don’t think he expected quite as intense a bad time as he got. Jock started with his usual angry dad routine of “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” but then laid into Justin for his lack of preparation and told him to hit the books when he got home. It was full-on, and transported me back to being gently told off by teachers for not trying hard enough in a very visceral way. Justin, I will be billing you for my next psychologist visit. Cheers.

Best Mums – Kishwar and Linda

On the other end of the spectrum, we had some complete overachievers! Kishwar came up to the judges directly after Justin with a one pot, one pan dinner for three, and it looked incredible. Apparently this is the kind of food Kishwar cooks for her kids all the time, so I would just like to echo the sentiments of the judges and say that I would also like to be adopted by Kishwar. I’m a good and quiet child and can help out with chores.

The Mum Supremacy continued with Linda’s Pun Seen – another massively generous feast that she very capably whipped up with the limited tools available. It’s extremely cool to see these mums crushing it while making cuisine that means so much to them. I’ve been cat-sitting for a month and can barely make myself one dish for dinner every night, so I honestly don’t know how they do it.

Largest Baby – Andy

In Thursday’s immunity challenge, the contestants were presented with the eight hottest chillies in the world and had to cook a dish with one of them. It’s a great challenge, they all do brilliantly, blah, blah, blah. Now let’s get to why we’re all really here – seeing screenshots of Andy Allen having to eat chilli and having a rough time of it.

Most Chilli – Linda

Linda drew the God Stopper chilli, which comes in at 1.5 MILLION SCOVILLE. A habanero is around 350,000, so this chilli is messed up. Nothing has any business being that hot. Yet when Linda took a bite, her reaction was, “Ooh! That’s nice!” I become more convinced as the competition goes on that Linda is some kind of super being.

Liking the chilli as much as she did, Linda proceeded to put chunks of it in every element on her dish. That eye fillet? Marinated in God Stopper. That dressing? Made from God Stoppers. The Kohlrabi— let me just stop you there because yes, it also contains God Stoppers.

Unsurprisingly, Linda’s dish was ridiculously spicy, but the judges were into it. Even Andy, who looked like he might pass out. That’s some skilled cooking right there.

The Gay Meats Award For Game Meats – Sunday’s elimination challenge

For part one of Sunday’s elimination challenge, the contestants had to try and identify a selection of game. The five with the lowest scores would go on into the second round and have to cook for their place in the competition.

I’m not gonna lie – seeing all this raw meat bummed me out. But then I was immediately cheered up because everyone insisted on referring to the game as “game meats” and every single time it sounded like they were saying “gay meats”, which I found hilarious because I am nine years old. Yes, my writing IS very good for my age. Thank you. 

Special mention to Tom, whose game meat got stuck at the back of this throat a bit.

The GOAT of goat – Kishwar

Kishwar was emotional at the start of her second round cook. She wanted to be sure she was doing Bengali cuisine justice as she attempted to cook a goat dish that would normally take hours and hours and hours of cooking. 

But not to worry, because Kishwar is a genius. Her Goat Rezala turned out perfectly because she is perfect and can do no wrong and has been a wonderful mother to me for the last 15 minutes since I’ve declared that she is my mum now. Great job, Mum!

The Hoges Award for Bad Crocodile Content – Tom

On Sunday we said farewell to Tom, who I cursed by saying he was my new favourite last week. I’m sorry, Tom.

To be fair, it might also have something to do with the fact that he decided to cook crocodile for his dish, despite being a pescatarian and having never eaten or cooked with crocodile before ever in his life. We can share the blame here.

In theory, it is sad to see Tom go. However, we’re not actually seeing Tom go because the next episode is the one where all the eliminated contestants come back, so we’re not even going one day without Tom. Best of luck earning one of those precious spots back into the competition!

Next week…

Everyone’s back! This competition will never end! One hundred years MasterChef!