MasterChef season 8 episode 12 preview: Who’s returning? A crawfish competition
The preview that aired following this past episode of the show confirmed that you’ll find out in dramatic fashion whether or not Yachecia or Newton is returning to the kitchen. We’ve already made our opinion pretty darn clear on this — we don’t like it, since by the end of the two hours on Wednesday (yep, we’re moving into a two-hour format for the rest of the season), neither one of these two home cooks will be remembered all that much. We like to think that almost everyone has their own exit episode when they have their chance to take off the apron and walk off into the sunset.
We’ve already stated our opinion that Yachecia will advance and Newton will leave, mostly because we picked her to win weeks ago and we’d look rather silly to go back on that right now.
Beyond this whole mystery, there is another notable element to this episode in a challenge that is all about one key ingredient: Crawfish. Living crawfish. We’ll be the first to admit one thing here: This would be the challenge that eliminated us. We’d probably have the same facial expression that Dino has in the thumbnail below. It’s not the sort of thing that excites us, given that we’re one of those food hypocrites who has no problem eating meat but doesn’t want to be responsible for killing it at the same time. You can see a number of people freaked out about this idea, and that is probably the goal. Sometimes as a cook, you deal with unsettling stuff, and while you can avoid this in your everyday life it’s a little bit harder to do that on a show that is meant to challenge every aspect of your culinary ability. If you’re going to be a professional chef, sometimes this could be a part of the job unless you’re working at a vegetarian / vegan place somewhere.
So who is in good standing moving into this episode? Provided that she’s safe we do think Yachecia will be around for a while, much as we do Dino and Cate given her recent run of performances as of late. Daniel’s riding high off of his last win, and you have to wonder about a guy like Jeff. He’s been edited at times as the hothead of the season, but he could be due for a victory after some recent struggles. It feels like something like crawfish would be up his alley given that he’s from the Gulf region and it’s outside of the dessert space, which is the one part of the competition he struggles the most in.
One way or another, there’s a lot of good stuff still to come on MasterChef this season! Be sure to come back on Tuesday for a longer exclusive preview of the action that’s ahead.
If you missed it, head over here to read our full review of this past episode. (Photo: Fox.)