In episode four of MasterChef Junior, the top 18 best home cooks were faced with their first team challenge, and the first-ever MasterChef relay race.
The mini chefs were separated into three groups of six, and each member prepared one layer of an American classic: the seven-layer dip.
Baton Rouge’s Avery Kyle was chosen as a team leader and coached fellow contestants Adam, Jaeclyn, Derek, Kaitlyn and Tae-Ho through the dip-making process.
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The challenge was simple: the first team to finish piling up layers of beans, salsa, corn, guacamole, lettuce and cheese wins and doesn’t have to participate in the elimination challenge. The winning team also gets the luxury of deciding what ingredients the remaining 12 contestants have to use in the challenge.
Avery’s team finished second, which meant she and her teammates were faced with the smelly elimination challenge. After surveying judge Christina Tosi’s box of spicy ingredients and Gordon Ramsay’s box of wrinkly ingredients, the winning relay team ultimately decided on judge Graham Elliot’s box full of stinky ingredients like garlic, blue cheese and truffle oil.
Kyle’s dish didn’t make it into the top three, but her rosemary lamb chops with a fried potato cake and garlic red wine sauce made it through the competition and she will compete in the top 16 next week.
The judges praised Kyle on her well-cooked lamb chops, but Tosi said she wished Kyle had gone more out of her comfort zone.
“Looking back now, I probably would have done something like sushi with a fish sauce for dipping,” Kyle says. “But when I was at that stage, I had so little experience compared to what I have now, and I made something I was comfortable with.”
Since the start of the competition, Kyle says she’s learned a variety of valuable lessons in the kitchen.
“I’ve learned new techniques from being on the show,” she says. “Like with the scallop dish—I had shucked scallops before, but I learned new ways to be efficient. There are a lot of things I never even knew I was doing wrong, but apparently I was. But I’ve learned to fix them.”
Kyle’s word of advice to future MasterChef Junior competitors? Go big or go home.
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“Well, not too very big,” she says. “Don’t step out of your comfort zone too, too much. Step out, but don’t do something like make a dish you’ve never even tasted before.”
Additionally, always have a Plan B, Kyle insists. Contestants never know what may or may not be in the MasterChef pantry.
Episode 5 of MasterChef Junior airs Friday, Dec. 4, at 7 p.m. Kyle’s family is hosting a viewing party at Baton Rouge’s Mellow Mushroom location at 6:30 p.m.