‘MasterChef Junior’ season 5, episode 3 exclusive previews: Grab your umbrella!

Thursday night’s new episode of “MasterChef Junior” is right around the corner, and in some ways, this is where the competition will fully begin! The remaining junior home cooks are going to take part in their first traditional Mystery Box Challenge, and in there, you’re specifically going to get a chance to see them deal with some inclement weather: Rice rain. Cloudy with a chance of rice, anyone? Check out the exclusive sneak peek below for a little more insight into that.

We always find this sort of stuff fun, since dumping random food on the various contestants / judges is never something that you’d see the show do during “MasterChef” proper. It’s silly, but it’s fun and the kid contestants never seem to mind too much. Also, it’s a pretty clear way to tell them what one of the main ingredients is that they’re going to be working with.

It’s a little too early to tell here who’s going to shine the brightest with this task, but there are two things specifically about this preview that we like:

1. Gordon Ramsay attempting to cover him and the other judges with a giant umbrella that is still not big enough to cover them completely from the onslaught of rice.

2. The presence of one Aarón Sánchez, given that he was recently named as a judge for the next season of “MasterChef” proper alongside Gordon and Christina Tosi. Hopefully, this will give us a chance to see a little bit more of who he is and how he interacts with the younger aspiring home cooks. We’ve seen him previously as a guest judge on the flagship show, but obviously that’s a very different situation and a different dynamic.

Hopefully, this is just a precursor for later this season — after all, we always find something being dumped on Ramsay’s head to be one of the seminal moments of any “MasterChef Junior” season.

Be sure to let us know your thoughts on this “MasterChef Junior” sneak peek below! Meanwhile, you can head over here to get some further news on the show, including recent episode reviews. (Photo: Fox.)