‘MasterChef Junior’ Preview: Mayim Bialik Calls Kids’ Talents ‘Bizarre, Awesome!’
Being a guest on MasterChef Junior is a dicey proposition — after all, W.C. Fields warned against working with children or animals. But, says Mayim Bialik, “Since I was a child actor, I don’t know if I can keep to that.” The former Blossom star, now best known as Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, brings a challenge never before seen on the show: Making vegan burgers.
“I’ve actually never seen any MasterChef show, Junior or otherwise,” admits Bialik, so she wasn’t sure what she was in for. “It was really intense. I was getting anxious just watching them cook, so I can’t imagine what it must feel like to actually be cooking.”
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She echoes the feelings of most parents watching the show. “I have two sons who are right in the age of the junior chefs I was watching, and my kids literally can’t clear the table without saying, ‘I can’t do it!’ And here are these kids doing unbelievably sophisticated things in the kitchen. It’s bizarre. It’s awesome!”
Not only are the chefs thrown by being unable to use meat, but cooking without animal products has other pitfalls that many are unaware of, as seen in the exclusive sneak peek clip below. Vegan “butter” doesn’t harden the same way that dairy-based butter does, and Adam’s potato rösti ends up underdone as a result.
Impressive as the burgers were, Bialik was taken aback by the creativity that accompanied them. “They also made a side to go with the burger and, in some cases, that brought more personality to the burger than I would have anticipated.” The key is in the sauce. “There’s one kid who this did sweet — almost Thai — sauce that went with the side dish,” she recalls. “It never would have occurred to me to do something sweet like that with a burger, and I really liked it.”
That’s high praise coming from someone who is a published cookbook author herself. Many of the burgers the young chefs offer are vegetable or quinoa-based. “My favorite burger that I make — that my children eat — you can either make it with garbanzo beans or cannellini beans,” she offers. “It’s basically beans and shallot, and it’s bound together with a little tahini and lemon juice and dill. It’s our favorite veggie burger.” The recipe is available here.
People like Bialik are changing views about vegan food, long regarded as being bland, foreign, and unsatisfying. “We asked every kid if they had ever had vegan food. Many of them were under the assumption that they had never had vegan food, even though all of them had had pasta marinara. All of them had had salads without meat or cheese. I think a lot if it is just changing the perception,” Bialik says.
This is the first time the show has done a vegan challenge. High-end cuisine is often very dismissive of those sorts of restrictions, but there has been progress on that front. Now, says Bialik, “there are restaurants with chefs who aren’t even vegan who provide vegan options.” There are high-end restaurants like Crossroads where you might not even realize everything on the menu is plant-based without being told. “My kids can’t live without Veggie Grill,” she laughs, talking about the fast-casual chain where fast food favorites are all vegan.
“I meet lot of people who think vegan food is inherently disgusting, even though they eat foods that are vegan all the time. I was actually really surprised; even some of the very young kids, their response was ‘Eww! Who wants to eat vegan food?’ when they eat plenty of vegan food; they just don’t think of it as vegan food.” However, she adds, “There were a few kids [on the show] who are from South Asian families who already had a vegetarian diet,” so it seems that the idea is slowly making its way into the mainstream.
MasterChef Junior airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on Fox.
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