Sweet Week having come to a momentous end, with Gill severely punished by the judges for not drinking coffee, it is time to return to normal, non-sweet MasterChef, where all are free to say umami again.

The amateurs enter the kitchen to find the expected mystery boxes, half of which contain certain death, the other half freedom. But today’s mystery boxes seem a little taller than usual, as if they might contain angry gnomes.

This mystery box is the creation of Nagi Maehashi, the mastermind behind RecipeTin Eats, who will be well-known to all Good Food readers. Nagi has made her name sharing recipes that taste good and are easy to cook, and thereby made herself a lifelong enemy of the food industry. Today her job is a little different, though: rather than sharing a recipe, she must instead share a box of ingredients specifically designed to ruin the contestants’ lives.

The box contains several thousand ingredients, from fish to spices to green things (the three food groups), but it also contains a menacing element: a timer set to 30 minutes. None of the amateurs have ever cooked a timer before, and making it delicious will be a massive challenge. Also, they’ll only have 30 minutes to make their dish: can they negotiate the near-impossible task of cooking like a normal human being?

“I really don’t know where I’m going with this box,” says Alex, who has made the fatal mistake of wasting precious minutes going to a studio to sit in front of a white backdrop and talk about her feelings, rather than getting on with the cook. Meanwhile, Josh wisely decides to go with what he knows: name checking a female relative.

Nat’s strategy is to pack as much flavour as she possibly can into her dish. I’m not actually sure that she said it in this episode, or if they just play the same clip of Nat saying that her strategy is to pack as much flavour as she possibly can into her dish in every episode.

Sofia lectures the judges on the paradox of choice, condemning late-stage capitalism’s brutally deleterious effect on the purity of the human spirit and the way that this challenge embodies all that is vile about modernity. Jean-Christophe makes the interesting counterpoint that maybe the contestants could make a pie.

Sumeet is making a curry. Andy and Poh doubt that such a thing can be done in just 30 minutes, especially with all the time she’s going to have to waste talking to Poh and Andy about it.

Sumeet and Alex have made a pact to stay out of the bottom three, collaborating on ideas for sabotage involving ground glass and snail baits. Alex is cooking spiced chicken tenders. “This dish is literally a staple in my house,” she says, “I use it all the time to hold bits of paper together.”

Meanwhile, Harry is making a dish called “Monday night fish night”. At Harry’s place this is one of the top seven meals he cooks, along with Tuesday night fish night, Wednesday night fish night, Thursday night fish night, Friday night fish night, Saturday night fish night, and Sunday Prawnorama.

Nat is busy pin-boning her fish, having made the always-difficult decision not to deliberately choke the judges. She tells Nagi and Sofia that she intends to poach the fish, something that will not please the Lord of the Manor: he dispatches his gamekeeper to bring Nat to justice.

Time is up, and all are amazed at just how, despite having only 30 minutes to cook, they’ve all managed to make something truly ordinary.

Andy and Poh visit Josh, who tells them that he made his own peanut butter, something that I’m sure didn’t involve as revolting a process as it sounds like. Andy and Poh taste his peanut sauce and find it far too peanutty.

Andy angrily tells Josh that his mother’s peanut chicken isn’t good enough, and only by renouncing his mother and all she stands for will he ever break free of the bonds of mediocrity. Josh sadly agrees to turn his back on his mother’s recipe, as in the garden a cock crows three times.

Bizarrely, the 30-minute cook enters its fourth hour, as Sav announces that she has her fish skin going and will soon be transformed into an all-powerful monster of the deep.

Sumeet and Alex reaffirm their pledge to join together to destroy their competitors. “There’s a rule with my friends: when you come to Sumeet’s house, you don’t eat that day,” Sumeet chuckles darkly, reflecting on all the times she has starved her friends.

Nat opens her pressure cooker. “Goddammit,” she exclaims, as she realises she accidentally put in Iced VoVos instead of rice. Time is up, and all are amazed at just how, despite having only 30 minutes to cook, they’ve all managed to make something truly ordinary.

Mimi is first to serve. She has made spicy pork with scissor-cut noodles, having not had enough time to find a knife. “There are a number of reasons why this dish is a monster success,” says Andy, before revealing that all of those reasons are “it tastes good”. “This is going to end up on my website,” Nagi threatens chillingly.

Nat brings forward her poached Murray cod. All the judges agree that the dish is delicious, but the rice is a little bit mushy, though they stress that this does not detract from Nat’s perfection as a human being.

Sumeet amazes the judges with a pork kofta curry that they were absolutely certain would suck, but miraculously doesn’t.

“This is going to end up on my website,” Nagi threatens chillingly.

Lachlan serves a chicken breast. Darrsh serves a fish curry. Harry serves a piece of cod. Nobody really notices. Sav also serves a piece of cod, but it’s overcooked, has too little seasoning, and her beans contain a near-lethal dose of garlic. The judges slap Sav with a restraining order requiring her to stay 50 metres away from garlic at all times.

Alex serves her chicken tenders, or rather, the chicken tenders that she has cooked. “The potatoes are crispy, but they’re just potatoes,” says Andy, who was hoping that the potatoes would be vintage Tiger Moth biplanes. “There’s nothing wrong with any of the elements,” he explains, the most brutal insult possible to give on MasterChef. The simplicity of Alex’s dish disgusts everyone, and she is forced into exile.

Josh brings forth the peanut chicken with which he betrayed his mother’s legacy. Jean-Christophe declares that it is missing “je ne sais quoi”, a French term which literally translates as “something that doesn’t make me want to vomit”. Everyone is in agreement that Josh has destroyed their will to live, and his family will carry this stain unto the seventh generation.

Time for the judgment to be handed down. Poh asks Nagi how she thought the amateurs went. “I think I would’ve crumbled under the pressure,” Nagi replies, so it’s no surprise that most of them did exactly that.

Mimi is declared to be the day’s best performer, a title that carries with it no reward of any kind. The bottom three, who will cook in tomorrow’s pressure test, are Alex, Josh and Sav. One of them will be eliminated, but all of them will be social pariahs.

And so thus ends the mystery box challenge that proved not only that making a pact with Sumeet is a futile exercise, but also that it is never necessary to spend more than 30 minutes cooking anything. Tune in tomorrow, when the bottom three will spend 63 hours stuffing a roasted camel with ice-cream.