Do you ever sit at home watching MasterChef Australia wondering how on earth someone fucked up a Mystery Box challenge? Whether the ingredients selection seems too good to screw up, or the contestant hasn’t used their time effectively, there’s always an element of “man, I reckon I could do it, easy” when you’re watching from the comfort of the couch.
As someone who considers themselves an above-average home cook, I’ve always wondered how I’d fare under the lights and the pressure of the MasterChef kitchen, especially during a mystery box challenge. Although I lack technical skills (don’t ask me to make melt-in-your-mouth macarons), I can whip up a meal out of basically anything in the fridge.
So, when the MasterChef Australia team asked me whether I’d give a mystery box challenge a crack and be critiqued by the judges — Andy Allen, Poh Ling Yeow, Sofia Levin and Jean-Cristophe Novelli — I screamed and begged my bosses to let me go.
Thankfully, they did.
You see, when the very first season of MasterChef Australia came out, it was a revelation for my little teenage self. Each episode, my family would sit down to watch the likes of Poh and Julie Godwin battle it out in the kitchen, taking notes and scribbling down recipes that we still create to this day.
For Christmas that year, I was given the season one MasterChef Australia cookbook. By my birthday in July, I’d made almost ever recipe with the goal of cooking Adriano Zumbo‘s infamous croquembouche.
It wasn’t as tall or as beautiful as the ones on TV, but god, it tasted good.
Childhood whimsy aside, I was itching to give a Mystery Box challenge a crack. In true self-righteous Leo form, I was certain I was in with a chance to win. After all, these things are usually press days filled with other journalists, and I know I have what it takes to beat the likes of Lachlan Guertin from Yahoo! (I love you, king).
However, when I rocked up, I quickly discovered that I wasn’t up against other journos — I was competing against the biggest Australian food creators on social media. There was Fatimah Oran (who was nominated for TikTok’s food creator of the year in 2024), Tom Smallwood (who has won one of these challenges before) and Jasmin Weston (who literally has her own cookbook), just to name a few.
With my hopes and dreams dashed, we were fitted with mics and headed to the MasterChef Australia set.
Now, the Mystery Box challenge was set up to be exactly how the real contestants experience the show. Along with our own aprons, we were asked to do interviews and take photos as if we were a real MasterChef hopeful.
As I walked into the garden alongside the talented bunch of creators, I took stock of the fully functional garden. It really is just like you see on TV, but in the flesh, every bush is brimming with produce.
As the crew briefed us for the day and conducted some interviews, I pocketed a couple of chilis on the sly. Just in case.
Coming into the kitchen, I had a game plan. No matter what was in that box, I was going to make pasta. My secret weapon? Make fresh pasta. Although I was pretty rusty, the ratios have been etched into my brain.
When the time finally came to lift the Mystery Box, I was relieved to see a bounty of items including prawns, tomato, pasta, flour, and herbs. There was even an entire brownie mix for those who might not be as skilled in the kitchen. I was feeling quietly confident. I didn’t know what was yet to come.
Despite knowing that this was a silly little event, my heart was pounding in my chest as I waited for the judges to announce the start of our hour-long cook.
When the clock started, I got to work mixing my eggs and flour mix. It was crumbly, but I felt that with a little elbow grease, I’d be able to make Orecchiette — a little ear-shaped pasta — pretty easily.
Once my dough was resting, I started prepping my ingredients for a summer tomato and prawn pasta.
It was all going well. Almost too well.
Thirty minutes into my cook, it was time to roll out the dough into a thin snake to start forming the Orecchiette. But instead of being a gloriously smooth form of dough, it crumbled.
Eyeing the time, I desperately waved Jean-Christophe over and he instructed me to keep kneading. As the minutes ticked away, I knew I needed to think of a plan B, chucking a pot of water on the stove to boil. After the pot of water took a bonkers amount of time to boil (even after Andy chucked someone else’s fry pan on it as a lid), I resorted to plan C by pan-frying some sourdough bread to put my prawn-tomato topping on.
You see, I hadn’t connected the dots that I’d told the production team that I was (tragically) gluten-free and they’d given me gluten-free flour to accommodate. Without gluten, you can’t just whip up pasta without adding other binding ingredients.
Ooopsie!!!
With five minutes to go, I chucked my prawn-tomato topping on garlic-fried bread, added a drizzle of olive oil and a parsley leaf to garnish and called it a day.
After an hour of scurrying around, the judges declared the Mystery Box challenge over, and I truly understood what contestants mean when they say the cook got the better of them.
While it wasn’t my best, I rested easy in the knowledge that cooking isn’t my day job — well, until I saw the impeccably complicated and scrumptious dishes plated up by the creators.
When it came time for judging, we each took turns being called to bring our dishes to the front of the judges to try. I was positioned in the front of the room alongside the two other non-food content creators, so we were the last three to be judged.
The moment the first creator, Tom, brought out his dish, our jaws were on the floor. The quality was incredible, akin to a true MasterChef contestant.
My jaw continued to drop with each creator’s spectacular creations until it became my turn.
When it was my turn, I nervously placed my dish in front of the judges, describing it as a “prawn, tomato sauteé served on a garlic-infused bed of fried sourdough with a side of desperation and love”.
“The most gormet version of prawns on toast I’ve ever heard in my life,” Andy quipped.
“Is this like, your plan C?” Poh asked.
They were right. After taking some bites, they stared at me before delivering the verdict. While they noted that it was absolutely bananas that I spent a whole hour making this, they did admit it tasted delicious.
“Shame about the pasta, because honestly, the topping would have had the potential to be the best we’ve seen out there today,” Andy said.
Obviously, the judges were being nice, and this dish would never cut it on real MasterChef.
However, I think I’ve earned some bragging rights that the MasterChef judges have eaten and enjoyed my cooking, and I’ll take that to the grave.
As a lifelong MasterChef fan, this was an opportunity that truly nourished my inner child. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.
If you’d like to watch my whole debacle go down, you can check out the video below.
MasterChef Australia: Back to Win premieres Monday 28 April at 7.30pm AEST on 10 and 10 Play.
You can find everything you need to know about the new season HERE.
