MasterChef season 8 episode 5 review: All scrambled up

Scrambled eggs are not the sort of challenge that anyone would find incredibly interesting; yet, MasterChef found a way. The truth is that we’ve had a chance to see in the past Gordon Ramsay’s famous video where he demonstrates his favorite way to cook the eggs — ironically, in that video he also burned the toast the first time! (Maybe Daniel was just doing some performance art there?)

The home cooks tonight had the challenge of trying to replicate that, and it was so much harder than you would at first think. You have to be patient with the eggs, but also use the right amount of butter, seasonings and crème fraîche. It’s easy to get one thing wrong, even on two separate occasions. That’s what Heather did, and we feel like she probably knew something was awry with the amount of pepper that she put into some of those eggs at the end. It was enough to make Christina Tosi cough, and if one of the judges is having a visceral reaction physically to your food, you’re probably in big trouble. Heather’s struggle here in turn bailed out Sam, who continued to show that he has a hard time managing cooking food in a way that is not slow and methodical.

We do relate to Sam here, mostly in that if we were him, we’d probably have the same sort of struggles when it comes to finding the right way to make great food in the amount of time specified.

For everyone else, they were able to make the eggs — even if it took a couple of times to do so.

Did Jason set himself apart?

Usually when you see someone on MasterChef talk about how great they’re going to be at something, it sets themselves up for a fall — just look at what happened last week with Paige talking about how good she would be at the Mexican dish crafted by Aaron Sanchez.

This time around, Jason had arguably the most dominant Mystery Box win ever in the shellfish challenge — the moment that Gordon Ramsay and the judges tasted the various components, they knew that he was the winner. He was enthusiastic, likable, and was passionate about this food, since it reminded him of his home and his family. If he cooks like this the rest of the season, it’s going to be tough for anyone to come close to touching him.

Final Verdict

While the scrambled eggs challenge was surprisingly compelling, we’ll still take any day a challenge that celebrates creativity more than copying a recipe. We just had that last week, so we would’ve preferred two creative challenges this time.

Beyond that, we’re starting to get a sense of some of the various stars of the season, both in terms of personality and also culinary ability. Grade: B.

Do you think you could tackle Gordon’s scrambled eggs with effectiveness? Share below! Also, be sure to check out some more of our MasterChef coverage right now. (Photo: Fox.)