Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

How to Watch a MasterChef Premier…from a MasterChef Survivor

My blog today is actually not on my site!  It’s on the site of a MasterChef season 4 contestant named Marie Porter.  Marie is one unique gal.  She and her husband Michael have a fascinating website and company called Celebration Generation which is remarkably like my own…there’s a blog that covers cooking and baking, DIY, and general interest topics, and Marie has published several cookbooks as well as a memoir of the devastating Minneapolis tornado that destroyed her home EXACTLY 2 years ago today…ironic that MasterChef is premiering today, no?

Anyway, this blog entry goes into some detail about the casting process for MasterChef and what these 100 folks endured for almost 6 months on their long and arduous road to the MC studio in Los Angeles.  It’s a must-read before you watch the premier!

Enjoy this behind-the-MasterChef-scenes blog by clicking HERE!

5 responses to “How to Watch a MasterChef Premier…from a MasterChef Survivor”

  1. Shari Avatar
    Shari

    Love your post, Ben! I always knew the show was somewhat fake and staged, but I never realized just how much fabrication went into making an episode of MasterChef! All the food is served after hours of being cooked or baked? How do they keep it looking so pretty and fresh? Interesting…

    1. Ben Avatar
      Ben

      Shari, the food is filmed immediately after it comes out of the oven and the cast leaves the set while this happens. Think of it, though…if 18 contestants had to be judged, and it takes 5 minutes per contestant (it takes much longer), that’s 90 minutes of judging. The last person’s food would look horrible by that time. So immediately after the food comes out, the contestants leave the set and the food is filmed looking hot and fresh. That’s usually also the time that lunch is taken. So an hour or two later, the contestants are back on set, their food has already been filmed, and THEN the judging takes place…which generally takes a couple of hours.

      MasterChef isn’t staged, and the contestants are real. But the only way for it to get on your TV screen and look like a real competition is for it to be filmed a very specific way, and there’s just no possible way for the judges to taste the food fresh and for it to look fresh on camera unless there are staggered start times for each contestant, so that every 15 minutes, a new contestant is finished and the judges taste. That would be confusing in the filming. So it HAS to be filmed this way in order for it to make sense when you watch it!

  2. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    That was an interesting insight. I was wondering about some of those very things. For eg, how does the food stay warm and fresh?

    Answer: it doesn’t.

    Do you think the judges take that into account at all? That is, if they taste something last, after 90 minutes, they cut them some slack in comparison to a dish they tasted first?

    I also didn’t realise just how much of an ordeal the preliminary stages were. I recall in season 3 one of the judges asked one of the contestants (Felix, I think it was) if she would try again next year if she was not successful that time. I wondered, was it such a big deal? But committing to do this again would be pretty game.

  3. Susan @ the Ice House Avatar
    Susan @ the Ice House

    Interesting & thoughtful behind-the-scenes info. I have also wondered how contestants can, say, make a chocolate souffle without having a recipe to follow. Instruction/classes are given beforehand, is that correct?

    1. Ben Avatar
      Ben

      I can neither confirm nor deny this. 😉

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