After weeks of promotion, Season 13 of the cooking show will launch tonight on Ten.One of the many promos rolled out by Ten recently features audio of a contestant saying: “I can’t cook … I’ve just got nothing left.”For more details about the moment, news.com.au asked the show’s executive producer, Marty Benson, what he could tell us.“There’s a moment in the series, I would say it’s the seminal moment in the series, where something happens with a contestant that’s never happened in my time,” Mr Benson told news.com.au. “It’s extremely gut-wrenching.”What we know about this season of MasterChefAfter months of auditions carried out over Zoom and eventually in person in Melbourne, 24 contestants were picked to battle it out for this year’s MasterChef crown and $250,000 in prize money.Melissa Leong, Andy Allen and Jock Zonfrillo are back as judges and according to Mr Benson, the trio are incredibly excited to “work with fresh contestants as opposed to past contestants”.“Something that we experienced last season on ‘Back To Win’, the contestants were all brilliant but they all had their own brand,” he told news.com.au. “They knew what they were. “For example, Brendan Pang just wanted to cook dumplings because he’s already set up his dumplings business. “That’s a big difference this year,” Mr Benson said. “Our contestants are really finding their way throughout the competition. I hate to use this term but they’re going on a journey. It’s bloody brilliant.”RELATED: MasterChef boss reveals how he got Katy Perry on the showWhich guest judges will appear on MasterChef this yearGetting some of the world’s most popular chefs to appear on MasterChef this year was incredibly challenging due to the pandemic.Instead of appearing in person, famous foodies including Nigella Lawson, Yotam Ottolenghi and Heston Blumenthal will appear on vertical screens installed in the studio.“Our challenge was: how do we involve them (overseas guest judges) and keep them included in the episode in an interesting and creative way,” Mr Benson told news.com.au.“For Nigella, we were inspired by her recent book, Cook, Eat, Repeat. In that book, instead of having normal recipes, she calls them ‘love letters’ to her dishes. So we got Nigella to read out a ‘love letter’ to one of her recipes and then challenged our contestants to recreate that dish without knowing what the actual dish was. “The vertical screens are incredible so it looks like Nigella is in the room with us. She’s live and constantly communicating with the judges and at the end of the cook she’s looking at all their dishes,” Mr Benson explained.Also appearing on this season of MasterChef will be Massimo Bottura, Clare Smyth, Curtis Stone, Kirsten Tibballs, Darren Purchese, Alla Wolf-Tasker, Scott Pickett, Poh Ling Yeow, Callum Hann and Reynold Poernomo.MasterChef dish secret revealedIf you’ve watched MasterChef in the past, you might have wondered how long the gap is between the contestants finishing the cooking challenge and the judges actually getting to taste the dishes.Mr Benson revealed to news.com.au that the judges actually try all the dishes before they’re shown tasting it on camera.“Once the cook is finished and the contestants go for a break, the judges quickly run around and taste all the elements of all the dishes while they’re hot,” Mr Benson said.The executive producer said that contestants make a second plate of food for the judges to try in addition to the one they plate up for the on-camera judging.“Also, the judges walk around with their pockets full of spoons and forks and they just taste sauces and purees and other elements throughout the cook, so they’ve got a fair idea what they taste like,” Mr Benson added.MasterChef Australia returns tonight at 7.30pm on Channel 10FTN AM Apr 19How to find news on news.com.au
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