Want to know what’s cooking each week when it comes to your favorite food and dining shows? Be sure to check out our weekly roundup of what’s sizzling, what’s salty, and what’s a little under-seasoned on your favorite food, lifestyle, and cooking competition shows.
‘MasterChef Junior’
Highlight on New Movie Released DVD
“MasterChef Junior” is back! It’s just like regular “Masterchef,” except when kids talk about how much Food is Life, they sound adorable and not pretentious and twee. The kids are actually pretty amazing — and not just because they whip up dishes that look and sound like they should be on a farm-to-table restaurant menu. They really ask questions, and take direction and say “Yes, chef!” with a kind of verve and gravitas that most thirty-year olds can’t convincingly pull off. In each round, four kids cook and only two move on to the top twenty.
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The final round this week was easily the most challenging, with four young cooks replicating one of Gordon Ramsay’s recipes served at one of his London restaurants. This challenge has been done before on “Hell’s Kitchen,” one of Ramsay’s many other TV properties, but the kids are far more measured, specific, and thoughtful with their questions about the recipe. In this case, their inexperience works for them, because they have no ego about asking Chef Ramsay how long to cook a scallop. This show is beyond formulaic, but it never fails to hit us in the feels at least twice an episode: Ramsey’s words to the young chef who most closely mastered his recipe had us tearing up like we were cutting onions.
‘My Kitchen Rules’
Highlight on New Movie Released DVD
On the Feb. 9 episode of “My Kitchen Rules,” we learned some crucial facts: First, Ray J has a dog named Bugatti — because of course he does. Actually, hold up: It’s spelled “Boogotti,” it’s a Maltese, and Ray J once threw him a $30,000 birthday party. Celebrities: they’re really not just like us! Next, we already knew Valerie’s the best person in the world — because she’s married to Andrew Dice Clay and seems to genuinely adore him — but she really took the title home when she offered to stay and help Lance and Diane plate their appetizers when they managed their time poorly.
Meanwhile, Brandy still can’t let go of the fact that her chili-and-sour cream Eiffel Tower appetizer last week didn’t receive enough accolades, and Cat Cora can throw some brutal shade when it comes to Dean Sheremet’s cooking bona fides (or lack thereof) — she straight-up tells him it doesn’t matter if he went to cooking school, because he doesn’t run a kitchen and therefore he is not a chef. Ouch! He’s going to need some aloe for that burn — but it’s a job hazard, after all.
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For our money though, the hands-down best moment of the entire night is watching how differently Kelly Osbourne (this week’s dinner host) and Ray J handle eating an unfamiliar food: It’s like a Goofus and Gallant comic come to life. (Also: how have all these rich people never had a dang scallop?) We’re going to be so sad when this show comes to an end. Luckily Season 2 of “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party” is on its way shortly — though we’d also happily settle for a spinoff where Brandi Glanville and Dean Sheremet drink wine and are mean to people.
‘Top Chef’
Highlight on New Movie Released DVD
Your “Top Chef” Final Four faced a recipe duplication challenge this week, much like “MasterChef Jr.” above — although this interpretation was more elegant and deconstructed (see what we did there? Foodie talk!). Here, the competitors must create a dish on the fly using only the tools and ingredients already at their stations while simultaneously talking an unseen non-chef through the cooking process — with the end goal being two plates that looked and tasted identical.
Perhaps due to nerves and the frenzied competition, three of the four contestants never manage to figure out that the non-chef on the other side of the partition is one of their loved ones. Sheldon’s the only one who caught on, recognizing his wife’s voice instantly, which led to a win — thanks to both his excellent coaching and her impressive cooking skills.
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The Quickfire win empowered the already energized Sheldon, whose inspiration is the deep passion for southern cuisine he’s seen in Charleston. Perhaps paradoxically, cooking this style of food has made him embrace his own Hawaiian and Filipino cultural roots even more, and is helping him hone his cooking voice. This momentum carries Sheldon all the way to the win in the Elimination Challenge this week, where he gets one heck of a prize: Cooking his own cuisine at the prestigious Beard House, a huge culinary badge of honor.
This week was all about cooking from the heart — sweet Sheldon obviously had it in the bag.
“MasterChef Junior” airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT, and “My Kitchen Rules” at 9, Thursdays on Fox; “Top Chef” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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