MasterChef contestant you see every season

MasterChef Australia is now in its tenth season and if you’ve been following MasterChef for a while like me, I’m sure you would’ve recognised a pattern to the kind of contestants that come on the show. Each season MasterChef Australia manages to transform home cooks into celebrity chefs, restaurant owners, cookbook writers and TV presenters with perhaps more success than any other cooking show in Australia. The draw of the show is not just great food, but also the fact that the show manages to stay away from all the drama and cringe of reality television and give us contestants that believably human and actually get on with each other. So what can you expect in a regular MasterChef line up each year (apart from parfaits and semifreddos?). Here is my top 10 list of MasterChef contestants you’re likely to see each year.

1) The Elimination Champion: There is always one contestant that ends up in elimination after elimination almost every week and manages to survive simply because they can follow a recipe or just sheer luck… and each week you groan as they survive while one of your favourite goes home.

2) The one that Peaks Too Soon: Like Hoda Kobeissi (who got eliminated after making cake pops) this contestant looks like they have the whole package, they make exceptional dishes, they keep winning challenges and you think they’re all set to become the next MasterChef. But then a few weeks into the competition and their winning streak dries up, their cooking starts to lack inspiration (cake pops?!) they begin to look like they are cracking under the pressure, and sure enough, they’re eliminated before making top 10.

3) The one in the Middle of the Pack: Whether it’s Brent Owens, Andy Allen or this season’s Kristen Sheffield, you’ll rarely see them in the early stages of the competition. They keep themselves hidden by staying out of eliminations and never winning any challenges early on. You barely recognize their names by the time they reach top ten and then suddenly they are someone in the reckoning to win.

4) The Meat and Three Veg Guy: The tradie with awkward hands, the guy who you think can’t really cook. Contestants like Ben Borsht, Arum Nixon or Trent Harvey get by cooking steak or meat pies in the early parts of the competition and somehow manage to survive eliminations and reach the top 10. They then surprise everyone with a delicate dessert or a sophisticated top restaurant style dish that has the judges raving their praises. (Tradie hands platting delicate flowers?)

5) The one that claims to be Dessert Royalty: These are the champions of all things sweet and chocolate (Can we forget Reynold Poernomo masterpieces?) they only make desserts, even if the only ingredient they have to cook with is Kale. There are those few occasions they try to cook a savoury dish just to prove that they can cook other food (like Jess Liemantara’s super hot sambal?) because we all know you can’t survive MasterChef by cooking only desserts… or can you?

6) Everyone’s Favourite Comeback: Now we all know that the only reason they have the comeback episode is so that they can bring back the most popular contestant that got eliminated too early. These favourites usually get eliminated in a series of unfortunate events and end up losing to cooks who are less talented than them. The only way to rectify that? Give them a chance to come back of course. So whether it’s Bendan Pang or Sarah Todd… the judges make sure they bring their favourite ones back!

7) The one that the Audience Love to Hate: This contestant is usually the one everyone wants to see eliminated, only to get saved time and time again either because they cry a lot or for some inexplicable reason the judges like their dish more than the other contestants (clearly we can see that the other dish looked better than theirs! even though we can’t taste it and we’re just watching it on TV!) in most cases the contestant is female and popular sentiment seems to think the judges are biased because of that… (based on the comments in social media) Some of these contestants even reach the grand finale only to be beaten by true talent in the end. Yes!

8) The Italians: There is no doubt the judges love their Italian food and each year we have an Italian or two channeling their nonna’s cooking making tortellini and ravioli and gnocchi galore. The Italians meet with varied amounts of success on the show, some like Gina and Aldo get knocked out mid-season while some like Laura Cassai make it all the way to the end. You might survive on MasterChef making only pasta, but sometimes you need to know how to make birthday cakes too.

9) The Dumpling Makers: If there is one thing that gets made as often as Ravioli in the MasterChef kitchen, it’s a dumpling. Some even make it their trademark dish (remember Tamara Graffen?) Asian food is just as popular in the MasterChef kitchen as Italian food and I guess that is representative of the Asian influence on Australian culture and food, which is not a bad thing at all. I’m just wondering how many kinds of dumplings are there to be made though? Will we ever see the end of dumplings?

10) The Indian: Almost every year and Indian makes it to the top 24 and almost every year they get eliminated very early on in the competition. Loki’s (rather silly) early exit followed the pattern of every other Indian contestants on the show. It might come as a surprise to some, but MasterChef Australia probably has a bigger audience in India than it does in Australia and perhaps the one odd Indian contestant every season is to keep the Indian audience happy. Shashi Cheliah is perhaps the Indian cook proving to be the exception so far…here’s hoping he makes authentic Indian food the next big thing in Australia!

So what is your favourite kind of contestant on MasterChef?