'MasterChef Junior' Sneak Peek: A Blind Taste Test Is Just the Beginning
No matter how refined your palate, every cook must shudder when faced with a blindfold challenge — and this week’s MasterChef Junior presents its tiny contestants with an especially difficult one: A blind “taste and re-create” test. The judges make them a mystery dish and they have to figure out and then make the recipe based only on taste and smell.
Recreating someone else’s dish without a recipe is tough enough, but combined with the blind taste test that is a staple of one of Gordon Ramsay’s other shows, Hell’s Kitchen, makes the task even harder. Is it chicken, pork, or beef? What is the sauce? Were those American green beans or haricot vert? It would be a great exercise to sharpen one’s nose and tongue, but made into a timed challenge, it becomes a nightmare.
Related: Gordon Ramsay’s Trick for Getting Kids Into the Kitchen
The kids are all over the map: Ian seems vexed by the vinegar (is it a Chicken Piccata?), JJ and Sam are split on the correct meat for the dish, while Avery focuses on the side dish. In conversing with his fellow judges, Ramsay suggests cooking multiple proteins before deciding which one tastes most like the example dish. It looks like Corey figured this method out, but did anyone else?
The next new episode of MasterChef Junior airs Friday, Dec. 18 at 8 p.m. on Fox. The show returns with back-to-back episodes on Jan. 8.
