Epic Fail / MasterChef

Every chef has a bad day. However, sometimes they go beyond merely bad and end up as hilarious or fatal Epic Fails.

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U.S. Version

Season 1

• The Pressure Test in Episode 5 had the contestants tasting a special Texas-style chilli prepared by Graham and guessing as many correct ingredients as possible before guessing incorrectly. Jenna, who is from Texas, messed up by mentioning "chilli powder", setting the bar at 7 ingredients, which got worse when Slim, who admitted that she never prepared or even liked chilli, guessed more ingredients than her.
• The Pressure Test in Episode 7 involved the contestants once again identifying exotic ingredients until they guessed incorrectly, this time all the ingredients were displayed on a table. Tony only got to guess 9 ingredients from the table by mistaking a starfruit with a "passion fruit". Even Tracy got baffled at him getting only 9. The remaining contestants all cleared the low bar set by Tony, eliminating him.
• In the Episode 8 elimination challenge, Slim sent up a terrible passion fruit fondue with lamb that didn't have the fat cut off entirely and passion fruit sauce with too much ginger in it. And it ended up looking more like an hors d'oeuvre plate instead of a romantic dinner for two, the objective of that episode's elimination challenge. It was so terrible that Joe refused to even taste it and trashed it once Ramsay finished his judging. Then she dug herself deeper when the judges asked her "what would she do differently if given another chance", by replying that she would do the same dish but with different sauce. She was then eliminated in that episode.
  • And it didn't stop with Slim's dish, as all four of the remaining women had failed to present even a passable dish that made use of the passion fruit. Joe had some unforgiving words for the entire kitchen as he trashed said dish. All four women were named the bottom four that night before the decision was made to eliminate Slim.
• In Episode 11, the final five had a challenge where they had to cook a fish dish for three food critics and the bottom two had to go into a pressure test. The two people in the bottom were Sharone, who decided to use fish liver (with one of the critics calling it the most disgusting dish he had ever tasted in his life), and Whitney, who used canned tomatoes for her sauce, and openly told the critics that she used the canned variant. Gordon was left completely flabbergasted by this result and said that he had expected Sharone and Whitney to be the top two, not the bottom two.

Season 2

• Many of the auditions were bad on a completely different level, but worth mentioning is the “Red Neck Sushi”, a fusion-confusion dish composed of rice, barbecue chicken breast and a mayonnaise-based vinaigrette. Not only did the guy take his rejection remarkably badly, but Gordon even mentions this dish as one of the worst things they had to sit through while giving an angry rant later in Episode 13.
• Episode 5 saw the first Elimination test of the season, in which challenge winner Christian chose for the others to do French cuisine. This produced fails from the bottom three:
  • Erryn produced a beef carpaccio, which is of Italian origin. Besides being from the wrong country, the slices were too thick and the seasoning was bland.
  • Angel couldn’t make a tart pastry, turning out a very sad soupy custard with fruit, resulting in her elimination.
  • Mark made a plain steak with mashed potatoes, which he tried to thicken with flour, resulting in Joe tasting raw flour in the mash. This got him immediately eliminated.
• During Episode 6's team challenge, there are plenty of these.
  • Suzy suggests and insists upon Derrick's team making lasagna. The others go with it. Cue Suzy admitting via Confession Cam that she's never made lasagna in her life, followed by her taking full control of making it and refusing help from others, resulting in a greasy, overly-cheesy, subpar dish. For what it's worth, she did realize her mistake and said that she blamed herself if her team lost (they won, but her lasagna got fewer votes than the blue team's burgers).
  • Giuseppe, an Italian man with incredible skill making Italian foods, is in charge of the blue team's pizza. Ben, an American, is in charge of the red team's. The red team wins the pizza votes - mostly because Giuseppe didn't make enough pizza.
  • Speaking of not making enough of something, the blue team planned to make slider burgers, but Tony ended up making full-size burgers instead. This, again, results in them running out - and an added fail when Max goes in back to pre-cook some burgers, bringing them out on a dirty tray that results in those burgers needing to be instantly trashed. The fact that they pulled it back by making some chicken at the last minute is amazing (and a testament to how bad Suzy's lasagna was).
  • During the Pressure Test, Jennifer placed in the bottom two because she made her pasta with nutmeg, which overpowered both the filling and the butter sauce. She only avoided elimination because Tony made a subpar dish.
  • During that same pressure test, Esther produced a batch of ravioli where despite the pasta itself being cooked perfectly, the judges noticed the filling tasted weird. When Gordon inquired about what was in it, Esther admitted she couldn't remember what she put in the mix. She didn't even stop to taste her batch during the cooking process. This left Gordon completely baffled, and it was only because she got her pasta correct that this oversight didn't get her eliminated.
• In Episode 7, Adrien won the Mystery Box and was given the advantage of choosing his ingredient for a dessert and another for his competition. He chose nuts for himself and coffee for the others.
  • Instead of using the edge to the fullest, Adrien ended up doing a torte with all the nuts in the pantry, resulting in a very confusing flavor profile and leading the judges to scold him for wasting his advantage. He only avoided the bottom three because three other cooks screwed up on a basic technical level.
  • Max’s Coffee Crepe Cake was so rancid tasting and had such an odd texture that Gordon took his time to compare it to a skin graft.
  • Both Alejandra and Jennie came up with severely undercooked desserts, both of them coffee-infused tarts. Alejandra immediately owned up to how bad her dish was, and Jennie was forced to admit hers was clearly still raw. These two dishes, along with the aforementioned misfires nearly brought the judges to their breaking point, and they admonished the entire kitchen for the long string of ill-conceived, ill-prepared dishes.
  • Alvin produced a very bizarre platter of coffee beignets with coffee chicory pudding. Somehow he produced an extremely bitter coffee sauce as the filling for the beignets, and the taste overwhelmed Gordon when he bit into it. Not helping the dish was the highly bizarre methods Alvin described in presenting it, which made it sound like a failed science experiment. Graham was by far the most critical of the dish, recognizing Alvin's intent but finding the execution to be terrible, and said it was simply "bad food". And seeing how both Gordon and especially Joe were extremely disdainful of the idea of using molecular gastronomy techniques at this point in the show's run, losing Graham's support was the death knell for Alvin, who was subsequently eliminated that week.
• Episode 9 featured a cameo by Season 1 winner Whitney, with the elimination challenge being to recreate one of her signature dishes, namely southern-fried catfish. The challenge, in general, produced a lot of bad dishes, leading to Gordon angrily ranting to the contestants about how none of them looked even one-tenth the chef that Whitney was, but three dishes, in particular, stood out:
  • Alejandra for some bizarre reason decided to add raw garlic to her tartare sauce, giving it such a strong taste that it completely overwhelmed all the other items in the dish, and leaving the judges baffled as to how she could have thought that garlic was one of the ingredients.
  • Adrien plated the dish in a completely different way to Whitney, putting all the parts in separate bowls on a rectangular, leading to Joe angrily taking them out of the bowls and assembling the dish correctly on a circular plate. While his version of the dish didn't taste particularly good anyway, they considered the plating to be such a basic error that they nominated him for elimination on those grounds alone.
  • Jennie, after struggling for a few episodes, finally came completely unstuck, serving up catfish that was so salty that Gordon spat it out, had a coating that was soggy and falling off and had coleslaw that looked to have been hastily prepared in just a couple of minutes. This, after a near-miss two episodes previously, saw her sent home.
• Episode 10 had a team challenge where the home cooks made hors d'oeuvres for a private party. Both the blue and red teams originally intended to have Chocolate Profiteroles as their dessert course, but their first attempts at the puff pastry batter both went horribly wrong. On the red team, Giuseppe immediately decided to drop the profiteroles and instead made mini fruit tarts, but the blue team's Esther decided to make another batch, only for that to also turn out badly. When she did make a good batch, it was only confounded when Ramsay revealed that their mousse filling was broken. With very little time, the blue team could only scrape up a dainty dessert of chopped berries with cream in a paper cup. A very embarrassed Ramsay not only called it the worst dish of MasterChef so far, but the worst dish to ever leave his own kitchen (they used his West Hollywood kitchen for the challenge). They ended up losing the team challenge based on that course alone.
  • A special dishonor for the red team that episode as well, as team leader Christian decided that their meat course would be a beef tartare, despite his teammates' concerns. It ended up losing horribly to the blue team's mini Wellingtons with 100% of them preferring that over their dish. If it weren't for the blue team's poor dessert above, they would have lost over a beef tartare.
• Episode 11 had a challenge where everyone was to cook an aphrodisiac dish, with the principle ingredient being a truffle valued at $500 apiece. Erryn tried to create a steak marinated in red wine basted with truffle butter. Unfortunately, he ended up burning his steak during its preparation and overcooked the potatoes he had hoped to include as a side and was forced to resort to a few vegetables to make up for it. Erryn was thoroughly dissatisfied with his dish and confessed his botched preparation to the judges, who could not make out the truffle sauce and were horrified at the expensive waste. Worse still, the vegetables Erryn did manage were rock hard. He ultimately fell into the bottom two along with Adrian, who completely missed the point of the challenge, presenting a filet mignon on a bed of truffle mash and chilli that looked disgusting. The judges decided to have the losing finalist turn their own apron in themselves instead of having their name announced. Knowing his dish was a complete failure, Erryn spared Adrian and bowed out of the game graciously, reasoning that Adrian's dish was at least cooked properly.
  • Jennifer won the Mystery Box, choosing to cook with the truffle, instead of taking immunity. Unfortunately, she ended up making a runny, bland-baked egg that placed her in the bottom 3. The judges took their time to scold her for wasting her advantage, singling it as one of the most stupid decisions done in the show.
• The elimination challenge in Episode 13 had plenty of epic failures.
  • Jennifer presented a pork and sauerkraut dish to the judges, a dish with which she had been raised as a kid. The judges were immediately astounded and Gordon derided its poor presentation before he had even tasted it, during which he spat it out. Joe then dumped the dish into the trash right in front of everybody, leaving a tearful Jen to reflect on her blunder as she returned to her station. The fact that Christian was grinning through the whole thing didn't help matters. But, she was spared by not one, but two dishes that fared far worse than her own.
  • Earlier on Suzy had served up a pork platter that consisted of an extremely bitter clove sauce that the three chefs could not identify, only that the bizarre concoction was both overwhelming and unappetizing. The judges ripped the dish apart, later calling it one of the worst things they'd ever eaten.
  • Not long after, Alejandra came up with a pork loin dish sauteed with kale, only to discover too late that the pork was raw. The judges were astounded that she had let this slip by and debated even tasting the dish as a consequence. Ultimately, hers was deemed the worst mistake of the evening, and so Suzy and Jennifer were spared from elimination.
• In Episode 17, Ben wins the Mystery Box advantage, and gets to ask Gordon three questions about the dish they have to replicate. He immediately wastes the first question by confusing beets with red cabbage. Despite having the advantage, he ends up losing the challenge and gets eliminated for overcooking his venison and overworking his sauce.
  • The challenge was so difficult that the only person who did well replicating the dish was Suzy, who never worked with venison before. All of the other contestants ended up overcooking the dish or making fatal mistakes with the sauces.

Season 3

• In episode 4, the contestants were tasked with cooking a delicious risotto dish.
  • Helene presented a small saffron risotto dish accompanied by scallops wrapped in burdock root. Gordon immediately could see that both the rice and the scallops were undercooked, and was also baffled by the burdock root, shaped like tiny baskets holding the scallops. The judges found this presentation to be laughable, and Joe tossed one into the garbage bin to remind the contestants to take the competition more seriously. He nonetheless tasted the dish anyway, confirming Gordon's assertion that the dish was woefully undercooked. However, Helene managed to dodge elimination.
  • Her risotto had nothing on Tali's dish, a bizarrely-plated concoction of gooseberries, cranberries, cherries, and pistachios. And on the side were hazelnuts and walnuts. Barely recognizable as a risotto, instead it looked like a tall mound of rice. The judges were incensed at Tali's mix of ingredients that had no business being anywhere near the dish, and found the dish to be disgusting. Tali was only spared because David Mack's dish lost out due to its sandy texture, causing him to be eliminated instead.
• In episode 6, the elimination challenge involved using either canned crab or fresh crab, with who gets what decided by Ryan (as he had won the mystery box challenge). He gave everyone he wanted to stay a fresh crab, gave everyone he disliked canned and made an exception for Christine as he was hoping a live animal would "trip her up". Not only did his plan backfire spectacularly (Christine and Monti, the two he was specifically aiming for, both delivered impressive dishes, with Christine winning and Monti surprising Gordon with the taste) but among the four singled out for elimination, three of them got fresh crab. The judges all voiced their disappointment and specifically singled out Tali, as Ryan had given him the fresh crab to ensure he stayed in the competition, and he somehow managed to bungle it up so bad that even Graham was making jokes at his expense. He survived, as Helene's fresh crab somehow tasted as if it was canned.
• Episode 7 ended with a pressure test involving making a molten lava cake, with the contestants given enough ingredients for four attempts. With time running out, Tali had presented a cake that looked okay, but was apparently a little bland and undercooked, while Anna and Josh had both presented excellent cakes. The one remaining contestant, Ryan, brought up his plate literally as time ran out... and served up a disintegrated pile of mush that Graham described as "diarrhea on a plate." Worse still, out of three lava cakes he made, all of them were in the same mushy condition. Turning this into a full-blown Humiliation Conga, rather than just announcing that Ryan was eliminated, the judges made him admit he had the worst cake and hand over his apron of his own accord.
• In Episode 8, the contestants were tasked with making three different desserts by Tanya, and Becky was one of four among the remaining twelve tasked with producing a trifle dish.
  • Becky's competence in the kitchen had become clear to the other contestants, many of whom came to resent her overconfidence. When she presented her visually impressive dish, the judges noted her unusual mix of spices and flavors, including star anise among others. To everyone's shock, Joe was forced to spit it out, calling the plate inedible and accusing her of showing off too much. The other judges agreed that the composition of her dish made absolutely no sense, and Becky was dealt a Broken Pedestal for her troubles.
  • Despite Becky's shocking performance, Felix's dish was declared worse than hers, because of her "free-form Tiramisu" (resulting in a poor presentation) and macadamia nuts inside, which Joe calls out for being notoriously out of place, both in texture and flavor. Surprisingly, she was ultimately spared from elimination as Scott had produced a highly mediocre strawberry shortcake for his part of the challenge, and had been told a few episodes prior that he would be eliminated the next time he landed in the bottom three.
• In Episode 9, the Yellow Team (which had Anna, David, Tanya and Monti) lost the challenge. The pressure test led to two notable fails:
  • Tanya was visibly stressed, making a lot of mistakes listed by Graham during the whole process. In the end, her tortellini turned out under seasoned and flat, prompting Gordon to ask her if she sat on them.
  • Anna ultimately gets eliminated. Despite having more experience than Tanya making pasta, she started by making her dough with a food processor (which overworked it without leaving it to rest properly), her water didn’t boil properly because she forgot to check the stove, causing them to be undercooked, and to make her tortellini, she poked them with a knife, allowing the water to get inside.
• In Episode 10, the challenge was to cook a dish on a pizza stone.^note The exception was Mystery Box winner Becky, who opted to use a deep fryer. David was one of those who elected not to make a pizza, but instead cooked a lobster and potato soup dish with all of the ingredients cooked individually on the stone. The judges noted his struggle with the dish and Graham was immediately critical of its lackluster presentation, and the taste did not make up for the shabby mixture. Joe was equally put off by the dish, sending David off and then, in his usual fashion, sending the dish to the waste bin, slamming it in and actually sending some nearby cookware flying across the counter. The entire kitchen fell silent, and David braced himself for what looked like certain elimination. However, he was ultimately spared that night when Mike and Tanya were both sent home instead.
  • Tanya's final dish for that matter was also a disaster from start to finish. Having produced a Mediterranean-style dish on the pizza stone, she ended up serving lamb lollipops that Gordon noted to be tough and dry, a soup with raw eggplants, doughy bread, and finally raw cloves in her sauce. The judges were baffled at all of the improperly cooked elements of her platter, and Joe called it flat-out disrespectful. Despite Tanya having beaten out Mike to make the Top 10, she was immediately sent home afterwards for her clumsy preparation.
  • Gordon took his time to scold Tali for the conditions of his work station, which was a cluttered mess, pointing out all his dirty bowls, pans and utensils on the floor, the stove and counters completely stained with flour from one extreme to the other. He then warned Tali that something like that could have him fired in any of the judges' restaurants. Predictably, his flatbread dish turned out mediocre (although not nearly as bad as the bottom three).
  Gordon: If you cook in a mess, you produce a mess.
• Episode 11 has a lot of this during the fish Elimination Round, where Felix is tasked with giving each contestant, including herself, a fish from the pantry, ranging from Easy to difficult.
  • Felix gave herself a Halibut because she wanted to challenge herself with it, despite it being a "Medium-to-Hard" level ingredient. She ended up making a subpar dish landing her near the bottom half.
  • David presented an over-seasoned Yellow Tail, which offended the judges given that it was the second most expensive fish of the lot, placing him in the Bottom Two.
  • The challenge also marks the worst performance for Christine. Felix intended to give her the most wanted fish, salmon because she likes her and wanted to give her an advantage. Christine ended up overcooking her salmon and landing in the Bottom Three.
  • Tali's "artistic genius" finally ends this episode when he failed to cook arctic char, the easiest fish from available fishes Felix assigned herself and others to cook with, properly (he chose to sous-vide his filet, but it didn't end well).
    • Joe's description sums up his failure best:
      Joe: So at the end of the day what you have here is basically destroyed lentils because I can see they are all exploded, overcooked, you have a bunch of herb scraps with no dressing on them, you have a fatty, nasty-looking bacon on top of some poorly-conceived cooked arctic char! You've consistently disappointed us.
    • This gets followed by Gordon's most memorable line of the season.
      Gordon: It's "MasterChef", not "masturbate".
• Episode 13 introduced the Tag-Team Challenge, with Frank in charge of pairing the home cooks. Except for Felix and Monti, the following pairs had trainwrecks of a performance.
  • David and Becky. David took the wheel and started giving Becky terrible directions like soak the nori sheets before making the rolls, on top of badly cut fish and the lack of wasabi in the nigiri pieces. The judges not only noted that David was a wreck during the whole round, but Becky was also guilty of not stepping in, taking control, and pushing David under the bus.
  • Stacy and Christine ended up producing the worst tray, with incomplete rolls, badly battered vegetables, and Stacy having a Heroic BSoD, to the point Christine, who had the most physical disadvantages, had to constantly calm her down. The judges ended up eliminating Stacy because of this.
• David's misadventure in episode 15, yet again. Oh boy, how do we begin? After winning a mystery box challenge, he was asked to choose one from three commonly known ingredients for savory dishes to cook a dessert with for everyone including him. He chose corn since his mother used to make corn and rice pudding for him. He also had an advantage to set three examples of dessert corn dishes (corn and rice pudding being one of them) and pick ingredients from the pantry right after. Since he had been looked down upon by most competitors, he proudly declared that he would be taken seriously after this... and proceeded to forget his rice after exiting the pantry, which became a subject of ridicule by Joe during tasting and Josh in Confession Cam. Even when Becky gave him the rice, his pudding was bashed by judges for being under-seasoned and lacking in corn flavor. Joe especially went so far as saying David's dish was really "unedibly disgusting." He was only saved because Felix managed to perform worse than him by making odd-shaped profiteroles stuffed with popcorn, which Graham described as "the poop emoji".

Season 4

• Episode 4's elimination challenge saw the contestants having to make dishes with langoustine.
  • Howard presented Gordon with a sliced citrus salad topped with langoustine, with the dish only occupying about half the plate it was presented on. Gordon cursed the dish the second he saw it and deemed it so lazy that he refused to taste it. Joe was even more unforgiving, saying he had spoken highly of Howard's ability in the kitchen and took the dish as a personal insult. Unfortunately for Howard, this moment of poor judgement would stick with him until his eventual exit from the game, having cost himself a lot of goodwill with the judges and struggling to stay ahead from that moment on.
  • Sasha Foxx presented a plate of langoustine topped on a bed of cheese grits. Gordon was immediately critical of the small and odd-looking dish, saying it looked as if someone had defecated on the plate. Gordon had nothing nice to say of the bizarre combination, with Joe agreeing that the two things simply do not go together. Throughout the entire thing, Sasha remained her usual saucy self and was not fazed by their negative reviews of her dish. Nevertheless, she was the first to be eliminated that evening.
• In Episode 5, the pressure test tasked six players with cooking up a classic cheesecake dish, with Krissi, Eddie and Kathy all producing exceptional cheesecakes while Jonny produced one that was shabbily prepared but still managed to taste great. It boiled down to Savannah and Adriana's cakes, with Savannah producing a cake that was too sweet and had too thick a crust. However, Adriana's was the one the judges were most apprehensive about tasting, as she had chosen to top her cake with guava paste and coconut shavings, two ingredients that left them completely baffled. Sure enough, the texture and flavor of said ingredients did not work in Adriana's flavor, with Joe crediting her cheesecake for having spared Savannah from certain elimination. Sure enough, Adriana was sent home that evening.
• In Episode 6, the contestants were tasked with creating a box of cupcakes to present to the judges.
  • Jessie started her initial batch only to realize too late that she didn't distribute her flour evenly, leaving half the batch unable to rise properly. Scrambling to make a second batch with what she had left, she ended up presenting a dozen bite-sized cupcakes to Joe, hoping the size would not make too much difference when it came to taste. Unfortunately, the judges were not impressed by the look or the taste of them, and Gordon remarked that they were dry. He then added that it was easily her worst performance up to that point, and Jessie ended up in the bottom three for her error.
  • Malcolm tried to make a banana rum cupcake filling with raw bananas, a big no-no in MasterChef. Gordon also said that it tasted sour and strange. He got eliminated in that episode.
  • Kathy also did no better, having never made cupcakes before. She made cupcakes with cookies baked at the bottom, which made it hard to cut into, and she piped fluorescent cupcake icing that overall looked sloppy and unappetizing. Joe even called her out for overcomplicating the dish.
    Jordan: Kathy's cupcakes looked like a neon tripping monkey took a shit on top of them.
• In Episode 9's elimination challenge, the challenge consisted of making Italian Agnolotti, taught by Joe's mother, Lidia Bastianich.
  • Lynn, along with James, missed the demonstration because of the penalty given by Eddie. He ended up producing a badly folded agnolotti with a double layer of pasta, and a filling made with a food processor instead of a meat grinder, resulting in a paste texture Gordon compared with cat food.
  • Jonny made a "Maple Alfredo" sauce, despite Lydia warning him that there's no maple syrup in Italian cuisine. He ended up producing a dish that only needed granulated sugar and cinnamon to pass as a dessert.
  • Beth somehow failed to boil water during the last five minutes, resulting in her agnolotti being undercooked. While she was saved from elimination because Lynn and Howard made worse dishes, Graham remarked the whole thing was sad to watch and Beth herself said that while it was possible, she hated to go home because of it.
  • The one who got ultimately eliminated was Howard, who took the liberty of making the agnolotti in his own style, with bell peppers, jalapenos and cumin, completely out of place in an Italian challenge. As if he wasn't already in a bad spot, Howard made his elimination all but certain by snarkily asking Joe what the point of the challenge was if they wanted everyone to make the same dish, causing Joe to launch into probably the angriest, most vitriolic "The Reason You Suck" Speech he's ever given on the show, telling Howard in no uncertain terms that he's a talentless, overconfident idiot who should forget about ever trying to make it in the culinary world. What makes the situation worse is that Howard later says in the Confession Cam that the contest is about finesse and creativity and he just doesn't "copy" recipes to win a quarter-million dollars.
• In Episode 10, Krissi keeps Bime in the Pressure Test even though he gathered most of the votes for their team, mainly because she hated him (she hates everybody anyway). Unfortunately for Bime, he mixed up the corn starch with tartar, resulting in a liquid key lime pie filling Gordon had to pour in a glass and drink, only to find out the heavy dose of tartar on it. His subsequent elimination only got worse because Krissi kept laughing at him during the whole thing.
• In Episode 11, Season 3's Christine returned to serve as a guest judge as part of a challenge where the contestants had to cook a savory crab dish.
  • Luca created a crab risotto to present to the judges, which was quickly deemed to be subpar. Joe then noticed that Luca had used fish sauce in his dish, as he reasoned it was a favorite ingredient of Christine's. However, Christine agreed that it was not an ingredient suitable for a risotto, and Luca was heavily mocked for having included it in his dish. He ended up in the bottom three that night and was narrowly spared from elimination.
  • Lynn singled out Krissi to cook a catfish as he hoped to trip her up due to her cockiness and arrogance, while everybody else was tasked with cooking the aforementioned crab dish. During her preparation of the dish, Krissi got on Joe's bad side when she struck up an argument with him, pushing forward with her plate despite her questionable technique. When she finally presented her very plain-looking dish, Gordon immediately compared it to a TV dinner, and the taste did little to impress judges or Christine, who criticized the uninspired, earthy flavor. Joe was the last to taste it, telling her her fish tasted like mud, and then tore into her for their earlier argument and expressed disapproval of her overconfident attitude. Upon returning to her bench, Krissi continued to badmouth Joe's opinion, to which he again called her out on her attitude. Christine agreed with the judges that Krissi's dish was a complete bust; however, she was narrowly spared from elimination while Beth was sent home instead.
• Episode 12:
  • This episode marked the beginning of Lynn’s downhill path during the competition. During the service, he kept sweating over the plates, and then wiped the plates with the same towel he used to dry his own sweat. Inevitably this prompted Gordon to keep him on the macaroon Pressure Test.
  • Despite Jonny having better flavors than Lynn, the macaroons turned out to be too thick to fit in the box, with the few seconds making him lose control and slam shut his box, smashing half his macaroons. If he had them intact and with less than twelve inside the box, he could have stayed over Lynn.
• In Episode 13, Lynn, widely considered one of the strongest chefs of the season, finished his run on the season with his infamous baked meringue dish, consisting of sliced bananas, banana puree which looked like an unidentifiable gray matter, and strawberries. It was quickly dubbed one of the worst dishes of the series, and Lynn was soon after eliminated.
• In Episode 15, Eddie is given the advantage of selecting four contestants who would have to cook with canned mushrooms and four others who would have to use fresh mushrooms. Eddie gave Luca, Jessie, Natasha and Krissi the cans, leaving Jordan, James, Bri and Bethy the fresh ones. Turns out that giving Jordan and James the fresh mushrooms was part of Eddie's plan, knowing well that both of them would feel too comfortable and end up overworking their dishes. In the end, all of the contestants with cans were safe, while James, Jordan, and Bethy, the ones with fresh ingredients, were placed in the bottom. Ultimately it was Bethy who got eliminated for producing Szechuan noodles with too much sesame oil.
• In Episode 19, Krissi won the Mystery Box Challenge and she got to pair each contender with a bird. She used the advantage to aim directly at Jordan (quail), Luca (turkey) and Natasha (pheasant), leaving Jessie the chicken by default. Turns out that Jessie was in the bottom two with the easiest bird to cook. Krissi lampshaded this in the confessional:
  Krissi: Dude, I gave you chicken. If you go home, you kinda deserve it.
• In Episode 23, Jessie gets paired with Krissi, who by that point was known as team poison. Krissi didn't feel comfortable with making most of the dishes, especially a crepe, until Jessie sarcastically told her to choose something she can actually cook, resulting in Krissi snapping and storming out for most of the time remaining, forcing Jessie to try to complete all the dishes by herself. This notably cost them the challenge.
• In Episode 24, Jessie is given the advantage of choosing between Kobe Beef, Alaska King Crab and Grana Padano cheese. Being too wrapped up with making a Batman Gambit to trip Luca with a crab (which was proved to be his Achilles' Heel), Jessie chose for herself the Kobe beef despite having no experience with it at all, trusting Natasha would get on board with her strategy. Unfortunately for her, Natasha decided to play to her own strategy and picked the crab for herself. Jessie ended up losing for a subpar use of the beef and leaving out the green papaya salad that would have elevated the dish.

Season 5

• Episode 1:
  • Two contestants got themselves eliminated before the allotted cooking time for the first challenge was even up; Gavin for his general ineptitude (including never once tasting the dish he was working on), and Natanya for producing a horrible-tasting sauce.
  • In the second half of the episode, Chandis and Corey failed massively on potato dishes: Chandis gave the judges a plate of completely raw Rosti (Swiss potato pancakes) which Joe Bastianich called "one of the worst offenses in the MasterChef kitchen", and Corey made a rock-hard potato souffle (after Gordon tried to remove the souffle from the ramekin by smashing it into the plate, the plate broke into pieces!). Both were immediately eliminated.
• Episode 2:
  • Astrid managed the rare feat of going from one of the early favorites to being eliminated in the space of an episode-and-a-half. After getting a lot of screen time in the first episode and being the best performer in that episode's second challenge, here she served up some under-cooked and over-flavored lemon bars, getting herself kicked out after the Mystery Box challenge.
  • Cutter got harshly chewed out by Gordon with a majorly ruthless tirade from Joe for producing a clumsy and poorly made cappuccino pudding with biscotti that looked unappetizing. He didn't know what biscotti meant ^note twice cooked almond biscuit, his pudding had a poor consistency with bland flavors, and on top of everything, he made a hugely grave mistake by decorating a clumsy MasterChef logo with caramel on top, which Gordon considered equivalent to a kick in the nuts.
  • Dan Wu was among those chosen for the Elimination Test where the task was to cook meatloaf. Dan presented Chef Ramsay with a very colorful loaf complete with Brussels sprouts and bok choy and felt confident in his dish; preceding his dish was contestant Whitney's meatloaf, which he remarked looked like a very plain plate, an assessment shared by the judges after the fact. In what proved to be a glaring case of Tempting Fate, Ramsay deemed Dan's dish to be one of the worst meatloafs he'd ever eaten, criticizing its wet composition. Dan managed to avoid elimination as Whitney was ultimately sent home instead.
• Episode 3 saw a pie-based Dessert baking replication Pressure Test:
  • Daniel, while keeping Honor Before Reason, chose to perform in the Pressure Test, and made a subpar pie with uneven lattice and a cracked crust, only barely saved by the filling combination.
  • Elise, the self-proclaimed baker, got in the bottom every time she tried to make pies, which was pointed out by Gordon. This got worse when the Pressure Test involved replicating a blueberry pie. At first, she was relieved because it was up to her alley, but it sent her to the bottom two when her pastry turned out raw in the bottom. She only got saved because Stephani made a worse pie than hers.
  • Even though Elise failed at her own specialty, Stephani managed to perform far worse than her in both halves of the episode. During the team challenge, she ignored Leslie's warnings about the chicken still being raw in the middle, not even thinking about cutting open the chicken to check. In the second half, despite having never made a pie of any kind in her life, she decided to incorporate pecans in both the lattice and the crust, and too much sugar in the filling.
• Episode 4:
  • Courtney proved she was not immune to this trope when challenge winner Ahran tasked the remaining cooks with baking a batch of twelve donuts to present to the judges. As Ahran had hoped, the technical nature of the dessert proved to be difficult for Courtney, and when her first batch failed she was forced to resort to asking the other contestants for whatever spare yeast they had. After much struggle, she finally was able to present an attractive batch of donuts for the judges, only to realize too late that she had mixed salt instead of sugar into the batter, forcing Gordon to spit his out. Unsurprisingly, the judges were baffled that Courtney had been tripped up by such a novice mistake, and Ahran was quick to mock her for having finally produced a bad dish. Courtney ended up in the bottom three that night and was only spared because she was seen as having more passion than fellow contestant Kira, who also produced an underwhelming batch that lacked any of the filling she thought she had added.
  • Francis B. produced a subpar batch of donuts that more closely resembled a batch of Munchkins from Dunkin' Donuts. With Ahran being granted the advantage of deciding what contestant she would spare from elimination, Francis kept stating that he hoped he'd be picked, knowing that his box of donuts did not stand a chance. Luckily for him, Ahran chose to spare him in part because she sympathized with him (and removing him from the bottom increased the chances of getting Courtney eliminated), and so Francis was allowed to watch the challenge from afar, stating that he owed Ahran for stopping him from having to present his failed batch.
• In episode 5, Leslie's poor leadership leads to these outcomes:
  • When he proved incapable of keeping a good communication with his team, the others immediately demoted him and appointed Francis B. to be the new captain. Unfortunately, he couldn't lead the team correctly either, resulting in a lot of poor decisions about the logistics and menu selection. Most notably, he ordered the team to drop one of the sides that Leslie had originally come up with but forgot to actually create a replacement, delaying the entrees while they hastily threw something together.
  • Christian noticed that they were running short on food and discovered that it was because Tyler kept eating the fish to sample it, resulting in fewer portions for the guests.
  • Jordan didn't help at all, looking lost in the middle of the kitchen and doing nothing useful.
  • One that doubles as a Funny Moment is when the judges asked Leslie who should be in the Pressure Test, and he picked the people who he had personal grudges with (Christian, Ahran and Daniel). Then Gordon told him "Fortunately for them, it's not up to you". This response only cemented the decision of having Leslie himself compete in said Pressure Test.
• Episode 7:
  • Fourteen of the fifteen contestants were paired up in teams of two to make a surf-and-turf dish. One of the teams was composed of Cutter and Dan, and to say that they fit this trope would be an understatement. From the very beginning, they couldn't agree on a plate, with Dan insisting on using ingredients that would shine in individual plates and Cutter arguing about it, trying to convince Dan that both proteins and the other components of the plate needed to fully combine into one cohesive dish. This led to them wasting their five minutes in the pantry and barely grabbing any ingredients at all. It all went further downhill from there, both of them working separately and with palpable animosity with their meagre ingredients and producing a terrible dish that, had it been an elimination challenge/test, would have easily sent either or both home. The dish was lacking in substance, with everything served in small portions, it suffered from poor presentation, and the items used lacked any real chemistry as noted by Gordon, who thoroughly panned the dish's poor execution before he tasted it. To top it all off, Joe made Cutter “do the honors” and dump the plate in the garbage can himself.
  • Later in that episode, Francis B ended up frying his spring rolls in cold oil - his attempts to rectify this resulted in greasy spring rolls and his elimination.
• Episode 9:
  • The elimination challenge/test consisted of using Joe's basket, which had a lot of Italian ingredients. Cutter presented an "artisan pizza", which consisted of a mini-pizza with no yeast in the dough and an overall terrible execution that looked unappetizing (like a kid made it in 10 minutes), and it tasted like crap. Cutter then admits that he called it "artisan" because that's what it says on his favorite pizza restaurant menu.
    Gordon: An "Artisan" pizza! My name is "Gordon Ramsay", not "Stevie Wonder".
  • The only reason Cutter remained safe was because Elise could only make one "sad ravioli". It didn’t help matters that she failed at kneading her pasta and Gordon had to help her fix it (and he isn’t supposed to help her because of his role as a judge, but at that point, everybody already knew she was a goner, so it didn’t matter anymore). As Cutter said it best, Elise is a self-proclaimed baker who can't bake.
  • Special mention to Big Willy, who made a tomato soup with a fried egg with all the gourmet Italian ingredients at his disposal.
• In Episode 11, Leslie chose to give his competition “Caramelle” pasta, which consisted of candy-shaped pasta with a simple filling and a delicate sauce. Despite being a simple dish, this tripped up three contestants in particular in a failed attempt to stand out:
  • In addition to receiving a penalty (courtesy of Leslie) of having to use a rolling pin, Daniel admits that his dish would have been the same even with the machine. What he ended up producing was a short rib-filled red-wine-infused caramelle with a tamarind and habanero curry sauce. The dish was far from being Italian, had confusing flavor combinations, and Joe couldn’t get through one bite without tasting the habaneros overpowering all the other components.
  • Big Willy made a “dessert caramelle” with sweet pumpkin and apple. It looked so hideous and unappetizing that Gordon even compared it to dog vomit.
  • Ultimately, it was Scottish Francis who got eliminated. His pasta was dyed pink with beetroot juice, the short rib filling was unseasoned, and the yellow cauliflower and bell pepper purée didn’t match both in color, texture and flavor profile.
• Daniel somehow managed to produce a poached egg with no yolk in the first segment of a multi-part pressure test in Episode 13.
• In Episode 15, Christian, Courtney and Jaimee are tasked with cooking a Croquembouche^note A tower of pastry cream-filled profiteroles, glued together with caramel and a spun sugar garnish. While Courtney successfully put it together (also being the only one of the three to complete the spun sugar), everybody else was predicting that Jaimee had an advantage over Christian, given her expertise with baking desserts. It turns out that, while having a visually stunning Croquembouche, Jaimee’s caramel was so thick that she couldn’t take one out for Gordon to taste. When she finally took one, it split in half, while the other pieces were still stuck together, topped with a weak filling. She got eliminated.

Season 6

• In Episode 4, Darah’s leadership at the amusement park challenge was so bad that her team lost in a landslide, even though she proudly proclaimed her expertise at the venue as her day job. She only worried about “serving the customers with happy faces”, while neglecting bigger problems like Katrina having to deal with two batters at the same time, or even the fried fish turning out raw. By the time the decision on who got spared from the Pressure Test went to Darah’s hands, she instead chose people who had been smiling while serving instead of the ones who kept the team from imploding, which even Graham questioned before letting it slide. She herself ended up eliminated for producing a bland batch of cinnamon rolls that Christina and Gordon heavily criticized.
  • Tommy deserves a special mention, producing a disgusting-looking box of green cinnamon rolls that Gordon called "a sick box".
• In Episode 6, Shelly's team was a failure from the get-go. She let herself be manipulated by Stephen's Reverse Psychology into choosing chicken. Then she chose to do stuffed chicken, despite only doing it once in her life. Her lack of leadership also was evident, as Derrick had to step in and direct the other teammates to regain control of the workflow. When her team lost, Shelly then took her advantage as Team Captain to save the weakest members with the hopes she could take down either Derrick or Christopher (despite being the most efficient members of the team), but instead got Ailsa out and got herself on Christopher and Derrick's hit list.
• In Episode 9, the contestants are paired to taste and observe Gordon’s Beef Wellington, and replicate it individually, only allowed to send one per pair to the judges. Despite not being at the bottom, the judges took their time to ask Christopher how bad his Wellington was, so much so that he made Hetal (the vegetarian) send hers. Christopher claims he only was missing his sauce, while Gordon observed a lot of other problems. It was so big that Gordon compared it to one of the cushions from the lounge, on top of having a raw pastry. He was lucky that Hetal did hers perfectly, saving both of them from the Pressure Test.
• Episode 10:
  • Shelly suffered the same misadventures as David in Season 3 in the peanut butter and jelly elimination challenge. First of all, she forgot to pick up peanut butter and jelly even though those were the key ingredients in that challenge, with Tommy and Nick remarking on this in the Confession Cam. Even though Gordon and Graham commented on how the others could ignore her and eliminate her easily, Hetal and Olivia ended up lending Shelly the ingredients. Despite this, she ended up in the bottom three anyway because her spring rolls looked like "stuffed condoms" and she used strawberries and ground beef which, as Gordon says, can never work as a flavor combination.
  • Surprisingly, Sara's peanut butter and jelly tart ended up being worse than Shelly's, due to mixing creme fraiche into it, which resulted in a tart that had little to no peanut butter taste to it. Oh, and the tart was undercooked. It did not help matters that she ended up arguing with Ramsay about it, which pretty much cemented her elimination.
• During Episode 13, the elimination challenge that featured chicken and waffles took place. Although three chefs grew up in the south, Tommy's dish ended up being the winner, but the other two? Well...
  • Claudia's Cayenne Fried Chicken with Sweet Waffle had a terrible execution with an unappetizing, trainwreck presentation comparable to diner quality, had pink, undercooked chicken due to using a big chicken thigh, and had a spongy waffle. Claudia used her time limit as an excuse for her underperforming, claiming that she could have done better if she had more time. Ramsay harshly berated her for that comment as Derrick received a penalty from Stephen to cook in 30 minutes instead of the whole one hour the rest of them had.
  • Shelly's classic chicken and waffle, however, was heavily criticized for having pink chicken as well, and it got worse when it was soon revealed that she had cooked chicken at her station, and plated the raw pieces. Also, her waffle was bland and had a poor strawberry salad as a garnish. She was eliminated that night.
• Episode 14 had a team vegetarian challenge where one of the team captains was Hetal, who had had a few struggles throughout the competitions due to being a Hindu vegetarian. She ended up choosing a dish that her team didn't know anything about (and thus struggled to complete efficiently and correctly), and lost.

Season 7

• In Episode 3, the men competed in the first elimination challenge by recreating Ramsay's halibut dish by taste alone. Not only did Bill fail to get a majority of his ingredients in the pantry, but his final product also looked like a low-budgeted version compared to Ramsay's, and had no puree and sauce. He was eliminated.
• The Blue team during the wedding challenge had a miserable time getting their appetizers out, partly due to Nathan and Shaun arguing over who had more control over the team (Nathan was the captain, but Shaun was concerned that his method of leadership was hindering their performance), and partly due to Barbara cooking the scallops way before the service began and making a huge mistake on the vinaigrette. As a result, they failed to serve all their appetizers before the speeches happened, and it led to their defeat despite a better performance on the entree section.
• In Episode 5, the cooks had to make pies in the Elimination Challenge and produced four poor performances.
  • Lisa-Ann's blueberry, raspberry, mint, chocolate, and mascarpone cheese pie had raw pastry, not enough sugar in her fruit, and too many elements that Christina could identify, with her adding on that some of them were not even needed. Despite how poor Lisa-Ann's dish was, it was not bottom three worthy.
  • Eric's berry pie had a raw oat crust and too many different berries that led to a watery crust on the bottom.
  • Despite making pies back home, this was Brandi's worst performance as her Granny Smith cheddar cheese pie with bacon had a dreadful presentation that Ramsay compared to a horror show, and it had both raw pastry and apples (as Granny Smith's were difficult to cook down).
  • However, the one who got eliminated was Brittney. She made a strawberry and rhubarb pie, already noted as a difficult pie to make; it tasted bland, which Ramsay considered disappointing, and had watery strawberries, and raw rhubarb.
• In Episode 6, the cooks who failed at deconstructing a lobster were tasked with making Gordon’s Lobster Tortellini with flambé broth. Somehow Lisa Ann managed to almost burn Gordon’s eyebrows while doing her flambé without paying attention to him. Not only that, she got eliminated for failing at making pasta despite being of Sicilian heritage.
• In Episode 7, the Pressure Test consisted of making a box of fried chicken:
  • Katie kept reminding the audience that, as a health trainer, she doesn't do fried chicken, so she makes her box without a batter, resulting in a very plain and dry chicken, which only qualified as "fried chicken" because she just put it in hot oil.
  • Diana tried to make her batter with cornmeal and double-coat her chicken, resulting in all her pieces having an overly thick and acidic layer of batter, which Gordon compared to fossils.
  • The one who got eliminated was Manny. He presented burned chicken, and Gordon pointed out the irony of him being a firefighter for a living.
• In Episode 8, the Elimination Challenge test featured offal proteins, and the two dishonors of the night went to D'Andre and Diana (both of whom were eliminated).
  • D'Andre's braised sheep tongue had a horrible presentation, and he failed to get his puree plated as he scaled the milk for it. Ramsay said that it tasted like bullets, and criticized his poor attempt to pass off his mustard seed as caviar.
  • Diana's Tripe Menudo had raw tripe that she minced to hide it, which Ramsay considered the biggest cardinal sin of the night. Although, properly cooking tripe even with a pressure cooker takes at least 40 minutes while the allotted cooking time was 45 minutes. Her not knowing of this still contributed to the failure.
• There are two moments in Episode 10 that are deemed failure-worthy.
  • The team challenge that time had them serving pork dishes with fresh produce to farmers. On the red team, Diamond's inability to lead led to a heavily disorganized team function come plating, and things got worse when it was revealed that Nathan failed to prep more kale than was needed (and this was after he complained that he was not receiving respect from his teammates). So, the red team was forced to serve quickly pulled kale that was not washed, but that got worse when the farmers complained that it tasted salty, and one of them actually spat it to the ground. In the end, the red team lost to the blue team in one of the few curb stomps at 81 to 20.
  • Then, the subsequent Pressure Test consisted of preparing Sausage in a Bun with sausages made from scratch. Diamond presented a chicken sausage that turned out to be raw in the middle, which in normal circumstances results in immediate elimination. She only got saved because Andrea, who ironically had the best dish, arrived three seconds too late to the counter and got disqualified by the rules.
• On Episode 14, the Tag Team Challenge took place, which featured a Romantic Picnic platter. Mystery Box Challenge winner Brandi set Nathan and Shaun to fail, and they did. Nathan was a complete Nervous Wreck to the point that he literally collapsed from the pressure of the challenge, forcing Shaun to do all the work by himself. The poor performance in the cooking showed in the platter itself. They failed to get the Scotched eggs on the plate, and both their burgers and lobster rolls were raw.
• In Episode 15, the pressure test involved baking and replicating three chocolate desserts. However, Katie forgot to add chocolate in her eclair, in a challenge that heavily involved chocolate. She was eliminated that night.

Season 8

• In Episode 3, Mark landed in the bottom three for presenting a bland pancake. He made things worse by telling Heather (in the midst of the elimination challenge test) to “just ignore the judges and keep cooking” right in front of Gordon, who immediately scolded him. And instead of improving his dish or doing something completely different, he only did the same sole pancake, but this time with chocolate chips, and a bland baked egg. He predictably got eliminated.
• Episode 4 had Jennifer as the leader of her team, but her leadership was poor because she tended to go frenetic under pressure, making some of the viewers question how she managed to work as a debt collector outside of the show. The team ultimately lost not only because of Jennifer's lack of control but because Paige ruined a lot of the fish by over-seasoning them with a whole bottle of cayenne pepper. Her only reaction was to keep a smiley face while giving a weak apology. Unsurprisingly, she got eliminated that same episode after delivering an undercooked pork chop and being too smiley during a Pressure Test, which Christina was quick to call out, and prompting everyone in the balcony to give support to Jennifer instead.
• In Episode 5, the elimination challenge involved recreating Ramsay's scrambled egg recipe. Heather added so much excessive black pepper that it turned the eggs almost grey, and Christina could not get through one bite of it, coughing uncontrollably. Unsurprisingly, she was sent home that night.
• In episode 6, the skills test had the contestants French trim a rack of lamb. Despite being a Texas cowboy rancher with plenty of experience with beef and lamb, Newton failed both at cleaning it and recreating Gordon’s herb-crusted rack of lamb, barely avoiding elimination because Sam delivered a point-blue (nearly raw) lamb. Newton himself commented that his failure at the challenge alone would make him an object of ridicule in his home state.
• In episode 8, Newton got the advantage for winning the Mystery Box, which consisted of deciding who he put in the Elimination Test. After he chose the ones he considered his biggest competition, they were assigned to make a Hanger Steak, which, according to Gordon, is a very temperamental cut that is required to be perfectly medium-rare. Necco made the mistake of underestimating the challenge by declaring "How hard can it be?", getting Gordon, who had been trying to tell him why the cut wasn't as easy as it looked, to call him "Mr. Humble" in response. As a result, Necco got eliminated by presenting a bloody raw steak plate that was so bizarre and unappetizing, even Christina had trouble finding words to describe it.
• In episode 9, there was the Cannoli pressure test, where the contestants had to make six cannolis, three of one flavour and three of another. Brien O'Brien only presented four, and Jeff just barely did better by presenting five. When Gordon desperately asked the last contestant Newton to tell him some good news, Newton replied that he knew how to count to six. He got a round of applause for that.
• In episode 10, the elimination challenge featured coconut as the main ingredient, and the chefs were divided into two groups by Cate; one group had to cook sweet dishes, the other had to cook savory dishes.
  • Jeff presented a deconstructed coconut cupcake, which Ramsay hated as he felt the word "deconstructed" was a poor excuse to cover up the mess (this was due to Jeff using coconut flour, which, unlike regular flour, absorbs moisture and has no gluten in it to balance out). It also had a dreadful taste, had a confusing garnish, and Ramsay called it his worst performance at the time. Even Cate, who gave Jeff the sweet basket, did not think he could have screwed that one so badly.
  • However, for as bad as Jeff's attempt was, Reba's coconut battered shrimp was compared to a 1984 buffet dish, had overcooked shrimp, and a dip that was too sweet for the dish. It got her eliminated.
• Episode's 13's Chicken and Potato Relay Challenge gave us Team Yachecia and Gabriel, who presented a dish with a broken sauce, and a portion of stuffed chicken and potato pieces so small an incredulous Ramsay remarked "Describe the morsel", and Team Caitlin and Adam, who presented what was effectively chicken nuggets and a slaw... for an hour's work. Ultimately, it was judged that at least the tiny potato gratin from Yachecia and Gabriel was cooked well enough, and so Caitlin and Adam went into the head-to-head battle.
• In episode 14, the tag team challenge was a Mexican platter dish. Of the four pairings, two of them did poorly.
  • Eboni and Yachecia's attempt. The presentation looked messy and sloppy as they were very rushed, they forgot to add the chips, the flatbread shells for the taco literally fell apart, and the taquito was compared to an unappetizing diaper. What's worse, Yachecia smugly tried to pass it off as a decent attempt, while Eboni knew that their platter was terrible. The two ladies also kept arguing and bitching at each other, much to Ramsay's frustration, since he claimed that he had never seen two strong, talented ladies so distant, and instead of being in sync as a team, they worked against each other.
  • Jeff and Caitlin's attempt. The taco shells fell apart, the churros were burnt and tiny, the lamb was improperly shredded, and the chicken was overcooked. Also, Jeff arrogantly tried to pass it off as a decent attempt, smugly claiming that their dish was a 7/10 due to having all of the elements and components on the plate, which Ramsay harshly chewed him out for.
• The baking desserts pressure test in episode 15 involved making nine chocolate truffles: three white chocolate, three milk chocolate, and three dark chocolate. Yachecia had only one white chocolate truffle, a half piece that made Ramsay ask if she bit into it.
• In the Episode 18 elimination challenge, five of the final six had to make a salmon dish with a time limit given by Cate. The two people in the bottom were Jeff and Yachecia, and both were sent home afterwards.
  • Yachecia, who had 40 minutes to cook her dish, made a sweet and hot salmon with braised Swiss chard and Tuscan white beans that looked so unappetizing and hideous, with Ramsay harshly berating that it looked liked it was prepared in 10 minutes and had hammered (re: overcooked) salmon. It did not help matters that the flavors were too confusing and disgusting for Ramsay to identify, and he called it the worst dish at that stage of the competition in the show's history.
  • Jeff, who had only 20 minutes to cook his dish, served salmon with feta cheese that was completely raw and had a weird texture to it. Also, Ramsay was appalled, pissed off and furious when Jeff smugly claimed and admitted that he truly wanted it to be raw (well more on the rarer side, but still).

Season 9

• In Episode 5, the Elimination Challenge Test involved replicating Gordon Ramsay’s Crab Benedict, presenting two muffins with perfectly seasoned crab, hollandaise sauce, and a light touch of paprika. Olusola couldn’t complete the second muffin, didn’t make enough hollandaise (because she wasted most of her eggs trying to nail the poached eggs), which was under seasoned, and she even forgot to use the presentation black plate, using a steel tray instead.
• Episode 6's Pressure Test had the losing blue team replicate a banana cream pie. Of the dishes, three failures stood out.
  • Farhan's banana cream pie was too wobbly and runny, as the under-whipped cream was too loose (not firm enough), and Ramsay even stated that it would need to be served with a straw.
  • Shanika's anger towards Chelsea (who was the losing team leader) heavily affected her performance, resulting in an over-whipped whipped cream, with Chef Aaron struggling to find out the difference between the whipped cream and the banana pastry cream filling
  • Darrick's came out even worse, with a messy, unappetizing presentation. Darrick not only omitted the vanilla bean pod, but he had also used way too much sugar, too much for Ramsay to handle. However, what truly sealed his fate was when he broke the news that he had never made whipped cream before auditioning...and the only one in the room not to do so. That shocked and infuriated Ramsay, who chewed him out on it. He furiously and strictly demanded to know if everyone else practiced mastering the basics (including making whipped cream) before auditioning (they all actually did). Him having not even practiced such a basic fundamental of cooking that even the kids on Master Chef Junior know how to do (compared to all the other contestants, with a show of hands confirming that they had all practiced) incensed Gordon. It pretty much cemented his elimination.
• Episode 8 featured Season 7 winner Shaun's wedding party. Juni's leadership of the Blue team was so pathetically unprofessional and appalling that the judges (especially Gordon) had enough of his incompetence. They just decided to eliminate him immediately at the end of the episode, skipping the Pressure Test entirely. In fact, the situation was such a horrible disaster that Gordon himself had to step in and dictatorially dethroned him so Taylor was made the new leader. Some examples from the Blue Team's disastrous performance:
  • Juni’s ridiculous, nonsensical ideas for the menu, most remarkably pairing the scallops with farro (which is considered more of a granular winter ingredient and out of season for a spring wedding), and Orange zest mashed potatoes^note somehow he was mocked for this even though citrus-infused mashed potatoes exist with duck breast. Shanika and Gordon both had to read him the riot act before he changed his mind to fondant potatoes.
  • Ralph and SJ failing miserably at peeling and cutting potatoes for the mash, basically doing a bucket list of what NOT to do, like roughly cutting uneven chunks, skin and eyes left, etc.
  • Matt forgetting more than once to plate the potatoes, as well as being too slow with his celery root puree, putting the Blue Team behind.
  • Ashley breaking down in tears when Ramsay harshly berates her for not making enough red wine reduction for the sauces, which landed her in the bottom two alongside Juni for losing her composure in the midst of service.
  • Dishonorable Mention for the Red Team: They seasoned their scallops way too early, and didn't even bother to pan-sear them immediately afterwards, causing Gordon to harshly rake them over the coals for committing such a cardinal sin. Towards the end, when they were already cleaning their station, Joe arrived with five plates of undercooked duck, right after they threw away their leftover mushrooms. They had to refire and send the duck breast entrees without the sides. Fortunately for them, as noted above the Blue Team made bigger mistakes.
• Episode 9's Elimination Challenge/Test tasked the cooks to recreate a Salisbury steak TV dinner with the time allotted determined by the chefs that the judges had saved. Julia was given only 30 minutes in an attempt to send her home, along with Emily (who had 35 minutes), and Shanika (who had 40 minutes). Julia ended up making the best dish of the night, while Emily also did very well. To add insult to injury, the contestant who was eliminated, Lindsay, was one of the cooks they gave the full 45 minutes, producing a bland steak that Gordon described as disgusting.
• In Episode 10, the contestants teamed up in pairs of their own choosing to prepare a chicken dish.
  • Ashley and Taylor team-up. How bad did it turn out? Both were so out of tune that they couldn't even agree on how to cut chicken breast correctly, with Gordon scolding them for mauling the chicken, telling them that even the kids in MasterChef Junior do better. When presenting the dish, both blamed each other for the decisions made (like making a pureé of baby carrots or doing wrong cuts of chicken), to the point even Shanika was criticizing them for not owning up to anything. What makes it even worse is that they are both Gordon's mentees wearing white aprons with his initials on their pins. With Joe and Aaron standing behind him and looking on with unimpressed facial expressions, Gordon admits that he feels like a complete idiot.
  • Mark chose to pair with Cesar because of his exceptional track record. Their shared overconfidence backfired, producing a chicken roulade that was the size of a quarter, was stuffed inside the thigh with chicken mousse made from the pureed breast meat, raw bell peppers, and was bland in general. Their herb roasted, glazed carrots, polenta cake with bacon, and their onion purees, on the other hand, tasted great.
  • Ryan and Gerron (two African-Americans from the South) produced a cornmeal-crusted, Southern crispy fried chicken drenched in the unbroken cornmeal, resulting in a dish way too crunchy for Ramsay to handle, with Gordon comparing it with a bag of chips. Both their bourbon, bacon and onion jam as well as their slaw received high marks, though.
  • Then came the Elimination Challenge Test featuring a cheese souffle replication. While Mark nailed it (with Ashley, Gerron, and Taylor also doing well enough to safely advance), Cesar and Ryan had serious errors that night.
    • Despite a confident start, Cesar overcooked his roux (which already had the grated cheese and warm milk added in), causing the fat to seep out. This left him with a broken cheese sauce, which prevented his souffle from rising properly. Luckily for him, Ryan made worse mistakes.
    • Ryan had almost no grated cheese in his souffle and used too much egg white, resulting in a lumpy batter. His souffle was compared to an egg-white omelette, and he was eliminated.
• In Episode 11, Mark's cockiness finally came to a head, leading to multiple screw-ups that cost him the goodwill of the judges and ultimately his time in the MasterChef kitchen.
  • In the Team Challenge that episode, Mark insisted on whisking his Bearnaise sauce on an open flame instead of a double boiler, since that was the way his father had taught him at his family's diner. He even ignored Aarón and Joe when they tried to correct him. Sure enough, when it came time to plate Mark's sauce had broken, leaving him with raw egg yolks and forcing the Blue Team to scrap it with no backup plan. After the Blue Team lost, Mark was rightfully blamed for screwing up the sauce, but when he tried to deny it, Joe chewed him out on it, reminding Mark about their deal, and said that he was beginning to regret offering him an apron in the first place.
  • Then came the Pressure Test which involved making a dozen cupcakes for guest judge Christina Tosi. Not only did Mark fail to box all twelve of his cupcakes (he could only box 7 of them due to running out of time), the cupcakes themselves had sloppy and overly-wet icing that was overly sweet to boot, and his choice of using a strawberry filling that left the dough soggy. This all led to Mark's elimination in the end.
• In Episode 13, the Skills Test had the Top 12 tasked with filleting and cleaning a full halibut to Ramsay's high standards. Except for Cesar and Emily, everyone else struggled on cleaning and filleting their halibut, but Ashley's attempt was easily the worst. She missed a very big chunk of halibut from the carcass (with Joe and Aaron estimating 6 ounces on it alone), and the filets she did cut out still had their skin on. Thankfully, she was able to redeem herself in the elimination/challenge/test with a great halibut dish with the portions she was left with.
• In Episode 15, the Tag Team Challenge featured replicating a Mediterranean Platter. Gerron, who won the preceding Mystery Box that episode, got to pick the teams himself, and the teams he picked to fail did so spectacularly.
  • Shanika and Samantha spent more time squabbling than cooking and it showed on the plate. The lamb kofta was overcooked despite being seasoned well, while their chicken was pink.
  • The worst pair was Taylor and Julia, as Taylor completely collapsed, leaving Julia to bear the brunt of the challenge. Their lamb kofta was grey, the falafel was overcooked to the point they looked like dog biscuits, the chicken was bland, and the spanakopita had too much filo paste.
• Episode 16 featured a field team challenge at the Southern California countryside for 25 firefighters. Bowen's leadership of the Red Team was so poor (compounded by his at-times broken English) that Gordon stripped him of leadership and made Shanika team captain.
  • Then came the Pressure Test, where the losing Red Team had to perfectly replicate a trio of pasta dishes. While Samantha successfully replicated all three dishes, her teammates had poorer showings.
    • Ashley's Pappardelle was too thick, with Joe comparing them to the shape of lasagna. Moreover, her Mezzaluna was missing the brown butter sage sauce, had some mushrooms on the plate (a misstep as those were supposed to be for the third dish), and her Swiss chard was blanched instead of sautéed with garlic and olive oil (since Ashley had never done it before). However, her mistakes were not enough to land her in the bottom two, as Shanika and Bowen did worse.
    • Bowen showcased his struggles with moving away from Chinese cooking, with his dishes coming out looking like wonton dumplings. And similarly to Derrick earlier, he had never made pasta before despite Joe, having given him a demo.
    • Shanika's pasta dough was way too dry, and she lost a great deal of time trying to get it through the pasta roller and salvaging what she could. This meant she had no time to develop her sauces, resulting in a raw butter sauce that Joe compared to movie theater popcorn. She was eliminated that night.
• In Episode 18, after losing The Restaurant Takeover, all 3 members of the losing Blue Team competed in a Pressure Test that involved baking and replicating three chocolate desserts (white chocolate panna cotta, milk chocolate mousse, and dark chocolate molten lava cake). While Gerron nailed all three of them, his teammates had severe failures that night.
  • Samantha's mousse failed to set properly in the fridge, due to her chocolate still being warm when she mixed it with the eggs. Meanwhile, her raspberry coulis did not set on top of her panna cotta, resulting in a panna cotta with soupy raspberry juice on top.
  • Farhan presented a broken molten lava cake that was reminiscent of Ryan's from Season 3, and it had raw cake batter in it. His panna cotta had over congealed so much that it did not slide off when tipped upside down, and his raspberry coulis had seized up as well, coming off of his panna cotta in a single raspberry disc. He got eliminated and went home that night.
• In Episode 20, “Battle of the Beef”, the final five, wearing their black aprons, were put through a series of consecutive skills tests with beef as the main ingredient.
  • The first round featured grilled beef kebabs, but Bowen altered the preparation of his beef kebabs by cutting the peppers in Julienne rather than squares, resulting in the judges rebuking him for taking liberties with the recipe. Even worse, the peppers on the skewer were raw compared to the ones on the plate.
  • In the meatball round, Samantha ended up producing raw pork-beef meatballs, which Gordon refused to taste. He was very disappointed and unimpressed by this.
  • Bowen, once again, attempted to use Chinese techniques when making his meatballs, this time coating and crusting the exterior of the meatball in the breadcrumbs instead of incorporating them into the mix, resulting in dry, hard and dense meatballs with a crusty exterior. He got eliminated and went home at the end of the episode.

Season 10

• Episode 3's first Mystery Box (which doubled as an elimination challenge) involved creating a British dish featuring one of Gordon's favorite proteins: either pork chop, rack of lamb or scallops. Five failures stood out that night:
  • Wuta, a vegetarian, let his anxiety get the better of him, and while his dish tasted good, his plating showed his inexperience with protein. Worse, he omitted a dynamite pork chop from his plate since he feared it may have been undercooked.
  • Liz had the ridiculous, nonsensical idea of adding caramelized potatoes, which threw the otherwise great dish completely off-balance. Even the bang-on effort at a medium-rare rack of lamb (no mean feat in and of itself) couldn't save this.
  • Evan was heavily criticized for his childlike plating, even though his perfectly cooked pork chop was delicious, as were the smashed fingerling potatoes (which merely looked unappetizing). Joe (somewhat bizarrely) compared it to a Season 5 dish.
  • Kenny's plating of pan-seared scallops with fingerling potatoes and mushy peas was outright hideous. It was so unappetizing that Joe compared it to a "fungal infection," and declared it one of the ugliest-looking dishes he had ever seen on the show. Taste be damned, the judges felt that his amateurish plating skills were unteachable, and eliminated him that night.
  • Deanna made a ridiculous choice in pairing mashed potatoes with salad. She described it as an attempt to create something "lean, sexy and refined," which only got the judges more upset with her. This episode was her last, as well.
• Episode 4's Beverly Hills Pool Party field team challenge featured the worst team challenge in the show's 10 season history. Even after the Blue Team won ^note Possibly only because Endemol Shine Group is not ITV Studios, and not as willing to let their judge-hosts do as they please., the judges made it clear that both teams screwed up royally to the point where it felt like no team truly won.
  • In Sarah's team:
    • Kimberly thought it was a good idea to fry the chicken without skin, and Wuta (who is, again, vegetarian) and Sarah let her have it her way despite their concerns. They ended up wasting a lot of time removing the chicken skin. On top of that, many of the chicken orders were returned because they were raw.
    • At one point, Team Captain Sarah buckled under the pressure and completely shut down to the rest of the team while prepping, cooking and plating, despite her background as a former army interrogator.
  • In Noah's team:
    • Subha forgot to turn on and preheat the gas grill (with the lid down) before cooking and didn't even see how that was on him. Much later he is seen doing nothing but cluelessly wandering around, lazily eating potato chips, to the point Gordon had to remove him from the kitchen and send him to water the plants. Despite the blue team winning, Noah sent him into the Pressure Test.
    • Liz burned multiple buns, on top of Evan grilling the burgers very slowly, stagnating the flow. And to top it, the burgers came back majorly undercooked, bordering on raw, with Gordon throwing one to the wall. In his confessional, Noah admitted how crappy they were, calling them "turkey grenades."
    • Fred produced an overly spicy Thai chilli sauce with a lot of pepper flakes, to the point Noah compared it to Satan's ass on the pot.
• In Episode 8, Sam ignored Dorian about using a cast-iron skillet to cook the sea trout, and instead insisted on using a stainless steel pan without properly preheating it first. As a result, the fish came out overcooked, and the three plates were all inconsistent. On top of that, Subha did a poor job by overcooking the lentils, which ended up splitting and releasing all their starch.
• In Episode 9, the blue team’s Pressure Test was the Tag Team Challenge featuring a six dish multi-cultural platter (each of the six dishes was native to different cuisines from around the world) along with a seventh dish of their choice. While two of the pairs did well enough to survive (with Dorian and Subha putting out a good plate despite Dorian's meltdown at Subha), the other two pairs failed miserably.
  • Sam and Shari’s attempt. Their dishes looked unappetizing, their potstickers were raw, and they forgot their seventh dish (which would've been sliders).
  • Michael and Liz’s attempt. They ended up with raw fish tacos, poorly formed samosas that had raw dough and pulpy potatoes, improperly crimped potstickers sitting in a broken sesame seed oil that numbed Ramsay’s mouth, overly seasoned spring rolls, unbalanced seasoning on the skewers, and dry meatballs due to the lack of egg in the mixture. Their seventh dish, shrimp tempura, was criticized for an overly strong sauce along with the judges rebuking them for trying to pass a sriracha and soy sauce mixture as an acceptable dipping sauce. This got them both eliminated.
• Episode 10's team challenge had the Top 14 cook for Season 9 winner Gerron's wedding. The red team were a disorganized trainwreck all around, from Wuta's absent, nonexistent leadership (both Micah and Noah were allergic to shellfish), to an overly complicated lobster dish conceptualized by Jamie that had to be redone from scratch to almost all of the VIP wedding guests, including Gerron and his bride, getting served underdone lobster. As such, they lost the challenge.
• Episode 13 had Bri, in a bread-themed Mystery Box elimination challenge, royally screw up her French Onion Soup in a Bread Bowl when it was revealed that the soup had soaked into the bread, resulting in her ending up with bread with onions in it instead. Even worse, her Blackberry Clafoutis with Brioche & Pistachio Crumble was a horrendous trainwreck that Gordon called "an insult to France" due to having very little brioche in it, especially since this was a bread challenge. She would've likely been eliminated in that same episode if not for Sam overcooking his fish and his bread pudding having too much honey in it.
  • Subha's dessert, a Rose & Saffron Bread Pudding, was way too spicy for any of the judges to eat without choking or coughing. Thankfully, his Chicken Mulligatawny Soup in a Bread Bowl was amazing and prevented him from being in the Bottom 3.
• Episode 14's immunity challenge featured the Top 12 being tasked to choose from a selection of birthday layer cakes to replicate, leading to some glaring mishaps:
  • Nick chose a Victoria Sponge Cake and thereby landed in the Bottom 3 for the first time in the competition. He had one of the easiest birthday layer cakes (leading to Gordon criticizing him for playing it too safe), his cake was just ugly, sloppy and messy, with the filling falling out from one side and a crispy, granular exterior. Aaron compared it to a hamburger made out of play-dough. His only saving grace was that he nailed the actual flavor and the cake's interior was light, airy, moist and it tasted deliciously great.
  • Bri, who chose Carrot Cake, presented a very sloppy, unappetizing cake that had almost no frosting, cake layers that were too thick, looked and tasted a mess. Meanwhile, the cake itself was so dense that Joe compared it to a pudding.
  • Renee kept repeating that redoing her Cheesecake mid-challenge was the smartest strategy she could have done. In her first attempt, she found out that her crust was too tall for the amount of cream cheese filling she had, so instead of trying to fix it by removing the excess, she decided to start over the cake, leaving her second batch less time to cook. As a result, not only was the filling's consistency still creamy, but she didn't add enough butter to the new crust, resulting in what Joe called "sweet cream cheese over cookie crumbs". She went home that night.
  • Despite not landing on the Bottom 3, Sarah's Berry Layer Cake was evidently sloppy. Since her meringue buttercream frosting took her at least three tries, the cake barely had time to cool down, resulting in most of the frosting melting, including the cream between the layers. Her saving grace was the actual flavor and the fact that she had challenged herself with a very technical cake.
  • Same problem with Noah, who nailed the taste of his Opera Cake but screwed up the presentation, resulting in his cake looking like a sloppy mess. The fact that he picked the cake considered to be the most difficult gave him the judges' respect and mercy.
• Episode 15's baking Pressure Test saw contestants creating a box of twelve macarons, and the infamously technical dessert caused multiple contestants to stumble:
  • Bri's nerves got the better of her and her shaky hands caused her to make a mess of the piping. Bri also was not thorough enough in removing air bubbles from her batter, resulting in a grainy shell. However, while this was her third bad performance in a row, it was not bad enough to land her in the bottom two.
  • Micah was only able to box eleven macarons (one short from a full dozen) because he struggled with time management and also since many of his shells had spread out too much to be used. He also baked his macarons with too high of an oven temperature, causing the shells to caramelize and turning his Lavender and Lemonade Macarons into an unappetizing muddy brown color.
  • Nick discovered that his macarons were underdone in the final 5 minutes. Thinking fast, he stuck the tray back into the oven (something which Gordon said that you should never do when making macarons), cranked up the heat to full blast and let it bake for another 95-120 seconds. As a result, Nick's macarons, although perfectly cooked, completely separated from their filling, leaving macarons with no body. He was narrowly saved from landing on the bottom two by being able to package all 12 macarons, and the macarons tasting good despite their shortcomings.
  • Wuta let the time get away from him and was only able to box seven out of twelve macarons. Also, not only were the shells of the macarons brittle and crumbly, but the cream cheese filling he used for his Carrot Cake Macaron was extremely oversweet, resulting in an unappetizing macaron and ultimately his elimination.
  • Subha overworked his batter, resulting in ugly, lumpy macarons that Gordon compared to "nuggets" that you'd find out of a trash can since they were hideously deformed and disfigured. Although the flavors and textures of his Orange and Rosewater Macarons were on point, the sheer lack of finesse present was enough to put him in the bottom two with Wuta, with an implied warning that any further clumsiness would no longer be tolerated from this point on.
• Episode 17's Pressure Test was a Mystery Box elimination where the contestants had to make a surf-and-turf dish with savory black truffles. While Subha, Noah, and Shari shone quite brightly, three failures stood out that night:
  • Nick's audaciously avant-garde overambition, wanting to over-impress the judges and go over the top got the best of him. He made a savory protein dish that looked very bizarre, unappetizing and weird-looking, featuring powdery brown butter dust that looked grotesque like cocaine, it tasted bland and finished off with a muddy langoustine emulsion sauce with grated black truffles. Fortunately, he did just good enough to be safe and narrowly avoided landing on the Bottom 2, but the judges sternly warned him to cautiously beware the dangers of recklessly and dangerously experimenting with molecular gastronomy and not to let his over-ambition trip him up by slipping into pretentiousness.
  • Although Bri nailed the cook on her beef and shellfish, she omitted the black truffles (which were a key ingredient) from her soubise sauce. While this was her fourth slip-up which landed her on the Bottom 2 with Fred, Fred managed to do worse.
  • Fred spent so much time working on making his noodles from scratch that he had to rush his way through pan-searing the steak, which he put in a cold pan despite his claim that he did pan-sear on both sides. Unfortunately, his steak came out completely raw and bloody on the inside—that alone cost him his apron.
• Episode 18's immunity challenge featured guest judge Grant Achatz, a molecular gastronomist chef famous for his artistically unconventional plating (i.e. serving food on props and objects besides a dinner plate or a bowl using culinary foams, emulsions, fog machines, splattered coulis, etc). Contestants had to make a dish according to these principles; most of them succeeded. Sarah, on the other hand, served her dish on a metal paint tray. The entire dish was running downward as she sent it out, creating an unappetizing appearance Joe compared to a rotting cadaver.
• In Episode 19, the Elimination Challenge/Test tasked the other contestants with making sausage from scratch. While Subha and Bri each had their own share of flaws, Jamie's Cajun Sausage dish with red beans and rice came out even worse. Never mind the unappetizing trainwreck presentation, the sausage itself was very dry and had a horrible mealy off-putting texture which Gordon likened to a paté. It was so appalling that the judges eliminated him immediately at the end, skipping the Bottom Three nomination process entirely and they sent him packing that night. Jamie (who had been a very strong frontrunner historically) had to turn in his apron of his own accord.

Season 11 (Legends)

• In Episode 5's Dessert Challenge, Annai opted to do a no-bake cheesecake. Unfortunately, she didn't account for the fact such a dessert needs far more time to set than the 90 minutes the challenge allowed, and the result was cream, which was described as being like a dip, an uncooked base, and worst of all, she was forced to serve the base's mold with the cheesecake just to hold its shape. She was, of course, eliminated that night.
• Episode 8's Californian Cuisine Mystery Box saw Joseph put up what all the judges agreed was the worst dish of the night - it was basically a beige plate of tubular pasta, and avocado, uni and grapefruit stacks (which left guest judge Jonathan Waxman confused as to whether it was garnish, or something that was just there for decoration). Joe even described it as a 'dump bucket'. Miraculously, he was only spared because this Mystery Box required the home cooks to use every ingredient in the box in one dish (which he did), with Tay being sent home because he forgot the uni in his own dish.

Season 12 (Back to Win)

• Episode 4's first Elimination Challenge saw Stephen attempting to elevate the panna cotta dish that sent him home in Season 6... and if anything, it was actually worse than before - it didn't have enough gelatine, so it didn't set at all (Joe even compared it to chocolate milk, calling it a disaster). He didn't survive, and became the first to leave, in a Shocking Elimination, showing all it takes is one bad day.
• In Episode 5, the first Mystery Box Challenge featured Season 7 winner Shaun coming back with a Spirits-inspired challenge. Despite having the easiest spirit to work with, Bourbon, Cate ended up struggling to bake her cake and was forced to serve a Frankenstein/deconstructed version to the judges. What's worse is that some of the pieces were cooked while the others were still raw. This led to Cate's elimination, once again reminding the contestants how serious this season was.
• In Episode 6, Alejandro led the Red Team to disaster and found himself being deposed by Gordon for putting meat that had fallen on the floor back on the grill. This egregious and disgusting act coupled with the Blue Team winning 71-30 meant Alejandro was sent home.

Season 13 (United Tastes of America)

• Episode 6's Mystery Box Challenge has the contestants do savory or sweet dishes with apples, And Kyle, who won immunity in the previous episode, was in charge of choosing which team does savory and which team stays with sweets. This gives some fails between the contestants.
  • Kendal did churros that looked bad and, worst, were salty since he confused the cinnamon sugar with salt. If it wasn't for Jennifer winning the immunity for the entire South Team, he would have been eliminated on the spot.
  • Richie knew that his cupcakes were too dense and didn't rise, so he tried to call them "homecakes" instead, but the judges were not in the mood to buy it. On top of it, they didn't soak any of the apple compote's liquid, with Gordon pointing out that it should have been a filling instead.
  • Charles didn't manage to burn the alcohol from his red snapper's sauce, leaving the strong taste of raw alcohol on it. In addition to it, he also thought adding jalapeños to the apple puree "to add color" was somehow a good idea.

• Episode 12 featured the Tag Team Challenge, which featured a three-course dinner containing: fresh tagliatelle with Sautéed Shrimp, pepper-crusted filet mignon, and sticky toffee pudding. Because Grant won the immunity pin in the previous episode, he got to pick the teams and selected Jennifer and Charles to work together. To say their teamwork was a train wreck is an understatement as they failed to work together and their plates were the worst of the group: the pasta was raw and Charles even hinted that the shrimp were undercooked as well, the filet mignon's near-perfect cook was overshadowed by an inconsistent seasoning, and the sticky toffee pudding base was small with no caramel sauce in the saucer.

• Episode 16 featured the Wall challenge, where the pairs had to make two perfectly plated dishes in sync. While Wayne and Grant nailed the challenge, and Sav and Kennedy did a good enough job, the other two teams performed exceptionally badly.
  • Reagan and Jennifer, despite both being from the South and getting along pretty well, didn't get to cook the scallops at the same temperature. Reagan's scallops were perfectly seared, but Jennifer's were undercooked but well-seasoned. The carrot pureé was bland in both, and Jennifer's grits were slightly better.
  • The ones who got eliminated were Brynn and Kolby. The dishes' plating didn't match at all, Kolby's salmon was undercooked, the raspberry-pear sauce had a weird texture that looked more like baby food, the flavor didn't match the protein and Kolby's arrangement of the sauce was sloppier than Brynn's.

International Versions

MasterChef Argentina

• In episode 10 of MasterChef Argentina, two teams must cook for one hundred little children. The challenge required them to cook a vegetable soup as an appetizer and serve it while other members of each team would continue cooking a pasta dish as an entree. The blue team left behind three members who worked through the pasta smoothly, whereas the red team left behind just two members, Laura and Mohamed, who completely tore everything down. Mohamed was too indecisive, while Laura kept insisting that they had to wait to cook the pasta, all while she tried making vegetarian meatballs in a size too big, which would take too long to cook portions for 100 children. By the time the other members returned, things were too far behind to salvage, and when teams had to serve the entrees, the blue team was on the right track, but the red team had nothing ready, and the judges promptly disqualified them on the spot, ensuring they'd all go directly to the pressure test.

MasterChef Australia

• Michael from MasterChef Australia Season 5 scored a place in Barossa Week's double elimination pressure test for serving raw chicken. The pressure test focused on having contestants retry the proteins they had failed with earlier in the week - and he dished out raw chicken again. The judges were so disgusted that they simply stated Michael was going home on camera instead of waiting until after the tastings as usual to reveal who was eliminated.
• A break down of one team's communication in Season 7's relay cooking challenge^note the contestants are divided into teams for each member to cook one at a time similar to relay race results in the team's spectacular failure that is still referenced by judges and viewers alike whenever the challenge appears in later seasons. The first cook of said team, the captain, planned on making a mussel coconut broth with tomato, saffron and basil— an accessible yet flavorful seafood dish so that other team members could continue without making much miscommunication. However, the third team member "went rogue," deciding to change the menu entirely and overcomplicate it by adding around ten more ingredients including a white chocolate to make a velouté with. The next cook after him was overwhelmed by the number of unfinished elements on the station and the last cook ended up making a simple prawn with scallop ceviche dish to salvage everything in 15 minutes, sending them to the elimination challenge. The incident was then called the "white chocolate velouté incident." A quite ranty review sums this up quite well.
• Season 15's first big advantage was the Second Chance Apron, which allowed its holder to compete for a chance to return to the competition in the next pressure test following their elimination. The winner of the apron was Larissa, who not only got eliminated in the second pressure test (which itself was only held because half of the contestants meant to cook in the first one had COVID, Larissa included), but managed to get into the very next one following her return and was re-eliminated in it.

MasterChef Italy

• In Season 1, one of the duels late in the season consisted of making Panna Cotta. Federico committed a fatal mistake that decreed his elimination: he put only one sheet of isinglass while his opponent correctly put them proportionally to the milk cream in the pot. Realizing this mistake, he removed his apron before the test was even over, but he was told to put it back. It resulted in a cup of liquid cold cream with icing on top, and only then was he eliminated.
• From Season 3, one of the contestants, Rachida, had to accomplish the simple task of turning a delicate dish called the Venus' Coffer (a savoury pie filled with tortellini, Bolognese and béchamel) right side up after extracting it from the bowl. To do so, she positioned a second plate upside-down on the dish, pressed the two plates together and turned the dish upright. The problem is, the size of the dish was bigger than the two plates combined. It resulted in Rachida unwillingly turning the Venus' coffer into a crumbled pie.
• Gabriele and Alessandro from Season 4 were both eliminated for making plates that were inedible: Alessandro made spaghetti with coffee beans that had an awful texture and an unbearably sour taste, and Gabriele cooked a ginger flan that wouldn't pop out of its ramekin and was so hard that it nearly choked chef Barbieri.
• The Invention Test with game meat had many stinkers: Nicolò cooked a borderline raw woodcock breast with tortellini, Paolo presented a horrible-looking turkey with broccoli sauce, and Federica brought a very dry guinea fowl breast with cherries that tainted the meat and hastily cooked potatoes, that decreed her elimination.
• In Season 5, Episode 17, all contestants must prepare a basket of three traditional Italian street foods (borlengo, arancini, and bombette), with Alida and Erica being assigned the handicap of preparing a fourth food (Sicilian stigghiola). Both ended up in the bottom three, Alida for putting whole star anise in her arancini, and Erica for forgetting her rice in the pantry, a key ingredient for arancini, and mistakenly using lungs for her bombette instead of pork blades. Erica was barely spared for her mistake, as Sylvie presented a very messy basket, with undercooked arancini overstuffed with meat, skinny bombette and no borlengo, and was eliminated for that alone.

MasterChef Canada

• From Season 1, one team challenge involved them cooking steak dishes for the Canadian Armed Forces. The red team had a disastrous service from start to finish which involved a raw barbecue sauce that team captain Kaila decided to scrap for a last-minute bourbon sauce, her decision to last-minute sear the steaks which held up a massive line and running out of Brussels sprouts and potatoes (which was detrimental as missing garnishes from plates would lose their votes). As a result, they lost the challenge in one of the biggest Curb Stomp Battles of the franchise with 18 points compared to the blue team's 107 points!
  • One challenge from Season 1 involved cooking a dish with the inclusion of smelts. Danny presented a batch of smelt croquettes with chilli lime sauce, having pureed the smelts. The judges were baffled at this choice and they agreed it tasted terrible, with Alvin royally tearing Danny a new one for this serious offense.
    Alvin: Is this a joke? I mean, this is MasterChef Canada! AND YOU GIVE ME THIS?!
  • While Klassen didn't get quite the level of outrage Danny did, her choice to put half a Scotch Bonnet in her curry (a Scotch Bonnet is on average forty times as hot as a jalapeno) also drew Alvin's wrath for the heat simply destroying the flavor of the smelts:
    Alvin: You like spicy food?
    Klassen: Yeahhhhh...
    Alvin: I don't.
• From Season 2, Kevin accidentally left the parchment paper in his dish. Fortunately, it was lessened when Michael said he made a similar mistake earlier in his career by cooking a chicken with the gizzards still in the plastic bag, and it was a Mystery Box Challenge with no elimination warning.
• In another Season 2 moment, Cody decided to forfeit his immunity just so he could work with truffles. His New York Striploin with truffle sabayon dish was heavily criticized for having a train wreck presentation and using three different truffles that had clashing flavors. He was in the bottom two but somehow survived elimination because Kevin did even worse than him by having little to no truffle in his dish.
• Season 4's Mai made a similar mistake to Kevin two seasons earlier when one of the judges found a piece of aluminum paper in her dessert. Unfortunately for her, this happened in a pressure test so she was eliminated in fourth place. Many fans agree that she most likely would've gone forward to the top three if it wasn't for that paper.
• Season 5's first pressure test in episode 2 required the losing team to make a four-layered Black Forest Cake. Keagan was confident going into the challenge until he realized too late that he forgot to add sugar to his batter. He remedied this by soaking his cakes in syrup, but then he dropped one cake on the floor when he didn't hold it carefully enough. Then, two of his cakes broke apart because they were so wet with the syrup, leaving Keagan with only a one-layered cake. What makes it worse is that the judges considered the cake he managed to put out to be the tastiest of the night, and had he managed to save more layers he may have stayed over Reem (whose cake still had raw batter on the bottom).
• Mistakes made by Jonathan in Season 5's last part of the pressure test gauntlet which involved a creme caramel and sugar dome were so bad considering other contestants saw him as one of the season's frontrunners. First of all, he tried to make the crystalized sugar dome using the inside of a ramekin as the base as opposed to the outside and only realized his mistake after he struggled to take the sugar out, cutting a lot of his time. When he made it the right way, he only managed to secure the top part of the dome. The second one and arguably the biggest mistake was he tried to flip the creme caramel without placing a plate on top of the ramekin, making some part of the custard crushed by the ramekin edge. The result was a soupy custard with a sugar piece placed on top. He went home that night.
• Season 6 Episode 9 had two major failures that episode.
  • First came the team challenge, where they cooked in Michael Bonacini's Leña Restaurante. While both teams got appetizers out with no serious problems, communication went down come entrees, which included a raw salmon getting out to the dining room which Alvin showed them, and over 90 minutes of no entrees sent out. This resulted in both Bonacini and his chef de cuisine coming and help out both teams, and in the end, the judges decided to name both teams the losers, a first in the Canadian version's history (or any other international series).
  • Then came the pressure test, which had 4 of the 6 chefs (minus Andre and Jennifer as they were sent to safety) to recreate three breakfasts for the judges which included a full English breakfast, a congee, and a bizcocho. Rozin failed on all three dishes; the blood sausage for his English breakfast blew up, his bizcocho was both dry and overcooked, and his congee had a bitter aftertaste due to imbalanced use of spices. As a result, he was eliminated.

MasterChef Indonesia

• While missing an ingredient or component in a dish duplication challenge is a very important indication that a home cook is going home, Nuuril from Season 2 took a step too far. In a pressure test where she had to replicate a balado tuna, beetroot rice, and banana fritters dish in 50 minutes, she had nothing ready when the time ran out because the stress from having to face her roommates/friends made her lose focus and consequently it affected her time management; the beetroot rice was still cooking, the banana fritters were still in deep-fryer, and the tuna was still on the pan, leaving her plate empty except for one measly leaf as a garnish. Needless to say, she broke down crying immediately because she knew she was going to automatically be sent home that night.
• Daniar's screen time in the first seven episodes of Season 5 is really awful. To name just a few of her failures, she undercooked and under-floured her sweet potato mini-layered cake and served the cake with the mold still on in the very first challenge, she mistook a cauliflower for a broccoli in the next challenge while the dish she served that time was "extremely pathetic". In the next episode she failed to cook rice properly so badly she became the first home cook who went directly to the pressure test. Rice, as in, Indonesia's staple starch. This astonished the judges since her audition dish was a very difficult one to pull off and she succeeded. In fact, she had to participate in 5 pressure tests out of 7 episodes. However, she apparently could cook well under pressure so she managed to dodge elimination again and again.
  Chef Juna: (in a duplication pressure test) *dumbfounded* You can finish duplicating a dish this complex?
  Daniar: Yes, chef.
  Chef Juna: But you can't finish your own sweet potato dish?
• Rama from Season 5, owner of a fried rice cafe, tries to show off his fried rice-making skill again after his fried rice in a previous challenge was praised. Problem? He did it in a durian challenge. He made it with apple, pineapple, and traditional spices with rice previously cooked in milk, and while it could work for some people, his version was a total failure, yet he found nothing wrong with it. It was so horrible that one of the judges said the food was a tragedy while another one compared it to a weapon of mass destruction.
  Chef Arnold: This is a tragedy in the culinary world. How and why this was conceived, I have no idea. What a mess! My palate feels violated.
• Hans's effort in making a dessert out of a mystery box filled with mostly savory ingredients in Season 5 episode 8 really didn't pay off. His polenta cake was too sandy and his candied carrot still felt like a raw carrot with sugar, making the whole dish taste like savory soup with too much sugar added in. The judges were so infuriated he almost went to the pressure test immediately.
• Bukhori demonstrated that making dessert on his own was not his forte in Top 6's sweet vs. savory challenge. His attempt at banana fritters ended in disaster; soggy chocolate coating for his strawberry garnishes, strawberry whipped cream with a weird texture, and bland chalky banana with no hint of banana flavor. One of the judges deemed it as the worst banana fritters ever, saying that street vendors could do a much better job. Worse, one of the best pastry chefs in the country was there to taste-test and she spat out the dish, effectively making the three usual judges feel extremely embarrassed.
  Chef Renatta: You had one f***ing job, Bukhori. Deep-frying bananas. Just, just go!
• Lita, despite the advantage given, failed to execute a simple ravioli with marinara sauce. She undercooked her ravioli, her ravioli was irregularly shaped and thick, and she added sugar to the marinara sauce, resulting in a tomato jam. The judges were infuriated because she proved she didn't listen to their continuous feedback of not adding sugar to every savory dish she made.
• Top 4's fix-your-audition-dish challenge was so bad that this episode could answer whether the home cooks' skills in Season 5 were much worse than in previous seasons.
  • Lita's audition dish was a chicken cooked in coconut milk and aromatic broth which the judges said lacked balance even though it was delicious. She changed it into a pan-seared chicken breast with coconut broth and aromatic sauce. The presentation was flat, the chicken breast was dry, she removed the breast skin^note the skin provides the most flavor from breast, and her sauce was overly salty. Worse, she actually had a pan full of chicken with an already balanced coconut milk broth but instead of serving that, she made a sauce by reducing the broth. The judges rightfully said that dish was a disaster compared to the audition dish.
  • Elin's dish was "sea bass" poached in coconut milk sauce. To improve her dish, she made a foam out of the sauce. The foam was runny and irrelevant to the dish since she served a cold dish but made a hot foam without a stabilizer, and since the dish was served on a flat plate, the runny foam made the dish less appetizing. The jaw-dropping moment was that she mistook the actual fish she cooked (cod) as a sea bass but the dish was good anyway because the fish fit perfectly with the spices she used, meaning she got in out of luck.
  • Kai's audition dish was a sirloin steak in mushroom broth which, while delicious, was confusing as to how to eat the dish. She still made a broth and sirloin steak and made a mushroom puree to "fix" the dish. After gaining a reputation for cooking good steaks, she made basic mistakes of pan-searing the sirloin with burnt garlic and not properly rendering the fat. To add more mistakes, the mushroom puree did not make sense and she separated the broth in a container for sauce. To say the judges became more confused with how to eat the dish was an understatement.
• Daniar's one small mistake when she helped one of the Top 3 contestants to cook 2 dishes for 18 people was this because it was enough to destroy one dish's flavor profile. She mixed up celery with coriander when making salsa to complement a dish with a sweet sauce. The problem was, sweetness and celery didn't mix at all and the celery's taste was so strong that the rest of the vegetables in the salsa tasted like celery. This and the overly tough short ribs on the other dish were enough to send the cook Daniar was assigned to help into the pressure test.
• In a Indonesian traditional meatball challenge^note essentially boiled meatball in a noodle soup and several vegetables cooked separately like ramen, Rania from Season 6 served a meatball dish using water she used to boil the noodle and the meatball instead of a proper broth, making the whole dish taste bland sans a meatball she stuffed with chipotle sauce (which one of the judges had to spat out because it was too spicy). The only thing that was worthy of praise from the dish was that the bok choy was cooked well.
• Surya from Season 6 who put up a lot of strong and condescending front because he put out good curry dishes was thoroughly humiliated in his elimination episode for his one-note cooking technique.
  • In one-core ingredient nut challenge, he was lambasted by the judges for serving only a nut sauce on top of an overcooked ribeye. One called his effort of "innovation" was shitty, one said the dish he served was enough to directly send him home, and the other one threw the dishes into the trash can.
  • In the next pizza challenge, he tried to make duck curry as his pizza topping. While the topping's taste is delicious, the presentation was criticized for the lack of color, not cooking the topping with the pizza dough, and for the failed pizza dough itself.
  • The most humiliating part yet was when he made two fatal mistakes in making his donut dough during the pressure test. First, he made a dough mixed with pumpkin but without mixing yeast. When he realized his mistake, he redid the dough with yeast but mixed the dough with hot water, killing the yeast before it had any chance to rise. He ended up with a box of dense donuts and omelette for his savory variant that none of the judges wanted to taste. Unsurprisingly, he was the first and the quickest person sent home that night.
• The home cooks in the first elimination challenge of season 7 are asked to cook with the assigned "judges' childhood memory food" with one of them being Gummi Bears. Mariska tried to make a fluffy pancake with Gummy Bear sauce but since she forgot the exact measurement for the dough, it ended up becoming an omelette with sticky and unpleasant-looking Gummy Bear sauce. One of them said that any children given this would be traumatized with Gummy Bear instead of making it their favorite and even compared the disaster to Season 5's infamous Rama's durian fried rice.
  • On the very same challenge, Vicky presented the judges a dish that basically consisted of chopped fruits and Gummy bears in soda water. Needless to say, the judges straight up laughed at the dish's poor presentation and overly sweet flavor.
• In a "Risk vs Reward" challenge from season 7, Vicky chose a risk package which turned out to be a package of scallops, premade pasta, a bunch of vegetables, and several other ingredients that could be used to make pesto. He ended up serving a dish with scallops so overcooked the cutleries weren't able to cut through it and a bland pasta. When he gave the reason he didn't know how to cook scallop properly was that he was allergic to seafood, the reason was rebuked by the fact that tasting it wasn't really needed to know the correct way to cook seafood and he could have made a dish without the scallop since there was no instruction to specifically use the scallop to make a dish.
• Season 8's second pressure test set a very low bar for the competition going forward. Despite being given 60 times to cook with a randomized set of utensils, 4 out of 6 made dishes that could be accomplished with half of the given time, making the judges feel extremely disappointed with the contestants as a whole. Furthermore, the eliminated contestant, Dani, made a simple egg french omelette breakfast with sauteed mushrooms and potatoes, which the judges said it could have been accomplished in 15 minutes and the taste wasn't mind-blowing enough to tolerate its simplicity. To add insult to injury, Olivia was on the chopping block undercooked her chicken yet she was saved in favor of the breakfast dish. That's right, the breakfast dish was so unforgivable it managed to make a fatal mistake in cooking looked better in comparison.
• Two episodes after that, four contestants in the pressure test were made to make a chicken cordon bleu in 45 minutes, a very common dish in cafés and diners in Indonesia. None of them perfectly cooked the chicken, resulting in various undercooked states because none of the contestants used two whole breasts instead of only one; it turned into a competition of who had the most raw chicken. Wita ended up being the one who went home and in the end had the inner half of the rolled chicken breast completely raw the judges had to put hers in trash can out of fear for contamination. The results were so bad one of the judges said all four should have gone home for this embarrassing display.
• Season 8's Top 5 basket swap challenge has Bryan, someone very not versed in baking, cook Nadia's basket who is touted as the season's baking expert. He attempts a creme brulee, but his two attempts are failures. As a last resort, he cooks a simple patisserie cream and serve it in a bowl with mixed berries and toasted almond, calling it a "Freaking Disgrace."
  Chef Renatta: Next I would like to call someone to bring their destroyed self-esteem, Bryan.
• The relay challenge of Season 9 is overall a huge chaos for the blue team. Palitho planned to make Rawon, completely forgetting that Rawon is a dish that people don't normally make, and forgetting some of the ingredients. Which causes Shearen to be completely clueless on what she's supposed to do, botching the sambal of the dish, and completely frantic the whole time. This leaves Devy having to salvage whatever she could do to fix the dish, and the fact that some of the ingredients, like beansprouts and lime, is also missing, the entire dish changed from Rawon to Soto Daging, which is also quite salty thanks to Shearen adding in too much salt.
• In Season 9, Arsyan had been a frontrunner through the entire competition and never had to compete in Black Aprons all the way up to top 3. However, when tasked to make Mie Aceh and Soto Betawi, he botched both of them quite badly. While both still tasted good, he turned Mie Aceh into something along the line of Ravioli and turned Soto Betawi into something more of a Pindang dish, completely out of the actual concept of Mie Aceh and Soto Betawi. This led to his very first pressure test and a Shocking Elimination over what could've been one of the show's strongest finalist.
• Season 10 has a challenge where the homecooks are tasked to make a dish from a goat's head. A lot of them screw up the cooking by either not cleaning the head properly, some of which even still have teeth and eyelashes on their dish the judges even say they won't pass HACCP or use the water on the head's first washing which cooks usually throw away because it's the dirtiest part of the cleaning process. Needless to say it's some of the worst tasting experiences for the judges.
• Still from Season 10, in a vegetable pressure test Rahman tries to make a broccolini pudding. Putting the ridiculous idea aside, since he doesn't do anything much with the broccolini aside from putting it in a mixer before adding it to the pudding mixture, the pudding ends up tasting like a grass. The judges are flabbergasted by the idea and question if he's self-sabotaging by cooking the dish. He's one of the quickest to be sent home that night.
• In Season 11, Andre had been quite arrogant since the auditions, claiming he's better than previous contestants. He was humbled quick a few episodes later, after being sent into the pressure test for frying fish n chips with tapioca flour batter. The pressure test turned out to be disastrous as he only managed to present two chicken skewers for three judges, in which he had the idea to boil the chicken first before putting it on the grill, and then put his paprikas that he had torched into iced water as well. The entire cooking process results in both the judges and the contestants baffled, and combined with his terrible attitude, resulted in an inedible, dry chicken skewers that the judges immediately threw out. It was an unanimous decision to send him home that night.

MasterChef Spain

• “#LeónComeGamba” (translated as “Lion eats shrimp”. During a Season 3 Pressure Test, Alberto presented a tomato, strawberry gazpacho with shrimp. The problem is that he decided to plate it like a lion, placing a mostly raw whole potato as a head. The judges immediately got pissed at him, to the point of feeling insulted by the dish, and Alberto was immediately eliminated. It even became a meme after the show.
• In the fourth chapter of the eighth season, Saray presented a raw, unplucked partridge with sauce and tomatoes, out of spite. The judges tore into her, told her outright that giving her an apron was their greatest mistake in the show's history and eliminated her on the spot.

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