Think you have to know absolutely everything there is to know about cooking – including how to stuff a duck with chicken, how to nail a Baked Alaska, how to make the fluffiest of Soufflés and everything in between – to excel on MasterChef? Think again.
While the whole premise of MasterChef is to test budding chef’s food knowledge and preparation skills, it appears contestants on the show are receiving a leg up prior to filming.
On a recent podcast episode of Nova’s The Babble, MasterChef’s Khanh Ong revealed the saucy (excuse the pun) details behind the handy cheat sheet hopeful contestants are given before going on the show.
“I feel like this is kind of a production secret,” he said.
“We get sent a list of things we should probably know before the season starts, so it’s just like 400 cuisines, do you know all your pastries? You have to talk about like 10 pastries.
“Do you know your five French sauces? And then from that do you know how to infuse the sauces? Do you know how to make a custard that then makes an ice cream? From there do you know how to make puree which then becomes a sorbet?“
So, it’s kind of like a check list of all the basics that you should know in cooking and half the time none of that shows up, it doesn’t show up at all.”
Khanh also lamented over the fact he spent ages learning how to make “rough puff”, which is basically a shortcut to making puff pastry, yet he never ended up having to make it on the show.
“But you get lucky with MasterChef sometimes where I’ll be practicing something on the weekend and I’ll come into a challenge and they’ll be like ‘This is this challenge’ and I’m like, ‘I literally made that three days ago, perfect.”
