MasterChef Australia episode one recap sees hopefuls booted

MasterChef is finally back and while it may seem like every contestant on the show is a professional cook, one contestant didn’t exactly measure up.

The war of the white aprons begins.

Can you believe it has been a full 12 months since we sat down to watch MasterChef Australia together? Gosh, hasn’t it just flown by.

It feels like only yesterday we were on the couch with Melissa, Jock and Andy, crying into our risoni bolognese.

But here we are again and, against all odds, the producers have managed to track down the only 26 people in Australia that still want to be chefs.

Apparently, that’s too many.

We only need 16 finalists, which means 10 are going to have to make some very awkward phone calls to their ex-employers tomorrow.

To make the MasterChef Australia shortlist and secure meaningful employment for the next 12 weeks, the contestants have just 75 minutes to recreate their signature dish for the judges. They must receive three ‘ayes’, otherwise, they’re back tomorrow night to cook again.

First up it’s Brent, the boilermaker from Queensland.

After tossing up between a Woolies chook roll and servo pie, he’s decided to make a braised lamb shank with baba ganoush and flatbread.

“It’s got truckloads of flavour,” says Andy, trying to relate.

The judges love it. Brent gets a white apron and he’s through to the next round.

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Jock Zonfrillo and Andy Allen are back for a new season of MasterChef Australia. Picture: Supplied.

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Next up there’s Therese, a performance analyst who dreams of having a job that doesn’t make her scream inside.

She’s crunched the numbers and arrived at the sad fact that MasterChef Australia is her best shot of getting out. To secure her place in the competition, she makes a mushroom-inspired dessert called “Into the Mist”.

Unfortunately for Therese, the Reynold legacy looms large.

That means every dessert must resemble either an edible garden or intergalactic spacescape and possess no less than eight elements, which she somehow manages to pull off.

Next up, Tommy announces he is making his mum’s chicken congee recipe.

“Food is how I show love, and I learnt that from my mum,” he says, and for god’s sake give the boy an apron already.

Crying over congee Jesus Christ give congee the Gold Logie #MasterchefAu

— Benjamin Law 羅旭能 (@mrbenjaminlaw) April 19, 2021

Then, Scott announces that his signature dish is truffle choux croquant and it’s at this point that I begin questioning my own signature dish, a cheesy pesto jaffle.

Up next is Justin, who says he’s from Perth, “the best city in the world”, and everyone laughs. That’s it from Justin.

MasterChef judge Melissa Leong. Picture: Supplied

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And now we reach the part where we start to question whether anyone is actually going home or whether someone forgot to book the ubers.

Then we meet Ben, an out-of-work flight attendant, who is pouring a green-tinged cream into a gun siphon.

“I never really fail at much stuff,” he says. The judges disagree.

“The texture of the ice cream was weird,” says Jock. There’s no crémeux, no sable, no dacquoise, just a sad pile of green mug cake. Sorry Ben, but you get the beige apron of shame.

And so it goes until the winners and losers are neatly separately like a perfectly cracked egg. But it’s not over yet, tomorrow night we’ll discover who will go on to live out their life’s dreams, and who will have theirs crushed like matcha crumb.

Erina Starkey is restaurant and news editor for delicious.com.au and will be recapping all the action from the MasterChef kitchen