Masterchef: The Professionals Bingo

It's back, and as usual, I'm heavily invested.

Every autumn, Masterchef: The Professionals takes up a great deal of my time. I don’t care about the other iterations of this franchise—who cares if some normal people are good at cooking? I want to see real chefs who understand and have experienced the trauma of working in commercial kitchens struggle to make dishes they’ve prepared for years simply because a floor manager is yelling “THIRTY SECONDS! TWENTY FIVE! TWENTY!” and Monica Galetti is breathing down their neck. I want to watch a seasoned pro make the worst gravy of all time. I want to see a young chef beat the odds and dedicate a beautifully pink lamb canon with redcurrant jus to their Grandad. I need the excitement of a forcibly dramatised reality show at this time of year, the contestants blinded by white-hot floodlights while they are told their clam bisque is grainy, their samphire relish too salty.

This is my Bake Off, complete with a problematic member of the jury who really shouldn’t be on telly anymore. I somehow couldn’t get into the cake and pastry version, perhaps it’s a bit too village fete-y, but even an old fashioned fete would have some bitching behind the tombola. I like the overblown sterility of the Masterchef: The Professionals kitchen. The fabricated urgency of it all. How harsh it is. Come on, you’re a chef! You said you could do this!!

Every year, I like to collect new clichés from the culinary world, which help me to understand what sort of a state the current climate is within the restaurant industry. When there are challenges set based on picking ingredients from a groaning table of harvest wealth, I like to draw conclusions on what are up and coming trends in food, noting when beetroot is chosen over carrot, or tonka is shunned for carob. It makes me laugh when a whole gleaming cod is set on a slab and a chef uses its cheeks and bones citing sustainability and “whole animal” cooking. What happens to the rest of it? You should have made big juicy goujons! Everybody likes goujons!

To aid my enjoyment of this year’s competition, and to help you too, I’ve created a bingo card. You can use this to create a drinking game if you want, it would be easy to include an alcoholic element if that’s your thing.

I would have added “Gregg goes absolutely fucking batshit gaga over a cheeseburger” as a joke, but that’s already happened this season.

Happy Mastercheffing!