‘MasterChef’ season 5, episode 4 preview: Is this challenge a little fishy?

What is coming up on “MasterChef” Monday night? The pendulum has swung back over the the mystery box / elimination challenge part of the competition, and for at least the first part of the competition, we’re going to have the segment of the season that tends to fill us with the most guilt.

In saying this, we are of course talking about the task that requires the home cooks to have to kill some sort of shellfish before creating the perfect entree using it. This challenge is tough, since there are always a few cooks out there who have next to no experience doing something like this.

For those who do struggle with it, they might find a chance to cook something that is more in their area of expertise at the second part of this episode. This pressure test seemingly requires contestants to do something within the realm of sweet treats, which could include donuts. It’s a shame that this episode is not airing on National Donut Day for that reason, but we figure that it will probably make us hungry for donuts regardless.

Even though we’ve seen a few weeks of the competition now, we are ironically still so much in the early going of things this season that we do not have any defined favorites. There are some cooks who we believe are better than others, but there is not a single runaway favorite who looks like they will make it to the end. For example, Courtney, despite doing well for most of the season so far, may be struggling in this one based on some of what we’ve seen.