Masterchef Confessions

I’m watching with great interest the number of people visiting my site lately after Master Chef Australia information. There’s been searches for masterchef auditions, what to cook for masterchef auditions, masterchef judges, masterchef and spam, spam masterchef and spam, spam spam spam masterchef and… oh wait, this isn’t monty python.

Apparently a lot of people want to know about Masterchef, and I am definitely one of them. So i’ve taken it upon myself to collate a little information from all the various visitors to my site in regards to the audition process, their impression of the fairness or otherwise of how the selections are happening, and any other little tid bits of information I can gather.

The score so far:

Out of the 7000 (or so) people who applied to be on the show, roughly 100 were selected from each state.
From the 100 or so who turned up to the Masterchef auditions, about 20 or so got through to the second day of competing. From those 20 or so people who made it to day 2 in each state, a final 50 were selected overall to go to Sydney for the semi finals.

Those semi finals will be filmed and are due to start on Monday next week the 9th of Feb.

Some stories coming out of the auditions are that a lot of people got through based solely on their stories, and who had little cooking ability. In my personal experience, I’d have to say this isn’t true. The people I met at the Perth auditions were all great people, who had as much love of food and cooking ability as I do, and I would have been very happy for any of them to go through.

I’ve also been talking to other people who did make it through, and can confirm that they are not all of the model stereotype, and did not resort to tricks or sob stories to make themselves seem more interesting in order to get onto the show. The people I’ve spoken to have also displayed an amazing level of knowledge of food and flavours, and I will be more than happy if they make it onto the show eventually.

The word from the audition floor is that seasoning and cooking things properly were big downfalls for a lot of people. Risotto was a hard sell, as were under seasoned dishes. Word on the judges is that George was very tough, Gary a bit dull, and Matt quite friendly. But then aren’t all Matt’s :)

Of course, there’s no denying that reality TV brings out the worst in a lot of people. The grand standing, the gregarious personalities, the over the top fakeness and willingness to do or say pretty much anything to get yourself recognised is all to tempting for some. I’ve heard plenty of interesting stories in the comments of the last post for that.

My two cents is that yes, this is reality TV, it’s going to happen. With Big Brother not airing this year, there will be a lot of disappointed teenagers and voyeuristic housewives looking for their reality fix. Masterchef needs to be the thing that fills that void. The producers are thus compelled to find personalities that fit whatever mould they think is needed to make the show entertaining. How interesting would it be if there were a bunch of food geeks sitting around a room discussing how to best sous vide a fillet of salmon ? (Ok, actually that would be quite interesting…but that probably just means I’m a food geek).

I’m still going to be watching the show of course. I’ve been through enough of the process now to be very interested in how it all turns out. And if a certain mystery person wants to send me a secret wink when they do get on the show, they may just make my day.