Masterchef is a more than daunting challenge at the best of times, but it just got a whole lot harder.
The BBC1 cookery show has introduced a new challenge to the mix, including a palate test in which contestants have to recreate a complicated dish… based on a single tasting.
The new series of the cookery programme starts next Tuesday with 50 amateur chefs competing for the culinary glory.
But host John Torode revealed they will find the new task “really tough”.
Television viewers will see him demonstrate a complicated dish on their screens, out of sight of the contestants.
The amateur chefs will have just a few minutes to sample it before being asked to guess the ingredients using only their senses of sight, smell and taste.
They will then be given an hour to recreate Torode’s dish without a recipe.
Torode said: “The deal is the contestants taste the dish that I cook and then we ask them to use their senses to identify the ingredients.
“The contestants think that this is the main test but then we show them a range of ingredients and ask them to recreate the dish themselves without any recipe of guidelines.
Torode and Wallace have really upped the show’s game…
Some of the ingredients they will see are in the dish, and a few aren’t. It’s a really tough test.”
His co-host Gregg Wallace said: “The palate test is really difficult , amazingly difficult.
“Even though the contestants have John’s dish in front of them it still proves amazingly difficult. One to identify flavours and second, and more importantly, to recreate them.”
In previous series of MasterChef, contestants have been asked to guess the ingredients of a dish after tasting it once.
But this is the first time they will have to recreate the recipe without knowing what it is made of.
It has also been revealed that during this year’s semi-final the contestants will cook for 12 former Bond girls at a banquet at London’s Savoy Hotel.
