The latest series of Celebrity MasterChef has already served up plenty of drama, with contestants battling the clock and the discerning palates of judges Grace Dent and Giorgio Locatelli. But beyond the culinary showdowns, the competition has also given home cooks a treasure trove of inspiration, revealing the dishes these famous faces turn to when no cameras are rolling.
With two heats down and another five celebrities entering the kitchen on Tuesday evening, here are three standout recipes that have caught the eye, from a punchy Thai-inspired steak to a gloriously indulgent lobster mac and cheese and a chicken parmo that embraces its beige-food credentials with pride.
A heat-packed performance from Emily Steel
Gladiators star Emily Steel made a bold first impression with the Thai cooking she grew up eating at home. Her signature dish, a fillet steak marinated in soy and oyster sauce, served alongside sticky rice, papaya salad and a ferociously fiery nam jim, was so potent it briefly numbed Dent’s mouth. Somehow, the flavours still came through intact.
Steel, who has progressed to the semi-finals, followed up with a chocolate brownie layered with salted caramel, black sesame praline and miso ice cream that Locatelli praised as “faultless”. Her Thai steak, however, is the dish home cooks can most readily attempt, provided they have a sturdy supply of bird’s eye chillies to hand.
The recipe calls for fillet steaks marinated overnight in a punchy blend of Thai thin soy sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar, lime juice and freshly crushed peppercorns and garlic. The accompanying nam jim gets its characteristic depth from toasted glutinous rice, ground to a coarse powder and folded into tamarind, fish sauce, palm sugar and finely minced shallot. A shower of chopped coriander, and an optional pinch of crushed chilli flakes for the foolhardy, finishes the sauce.
The sticky rice requires patience: it must be soaked for at least eight hours before being steamed in a muslin-lined bamboo steamer. The papaya salad, meanwhile, balances the heat with the tart brightness of lime and tamarind, the crunch of roasted peanuts, and a gentle bruising of the shredded papaya to help it absorb the dressing.
Eric Underwood’s American soul food odyssey
Former Royal Ballet dancer Eric Underwood took a more circuitous route through the competition. An ambitious attempt to match Locatelli’s pace in the early rounds left him struggling, but a return to the American soul food of his childhood rescued his campaign. His scotch bonnet fried chicken with Parmesan mash and a chickpea pancake was among his strongest efforts, though a troublesome red wine gravy in the quarter-final ultimately brought his MasterChef journey to an end.
Macaroni cheese, though, is where Underwood feels most at home. He learned to cook by watching his mother, and fried chicken, collard greens and mac and cheese were the first meal he ever prepared for his family. Before entering the show, he declared that his go-to dish for impressing friends would be his “famous mac and cheese”, perhaps with lobster thrown in for good measure.
The version he delivered on the programme makes good on that promise. Lobster tails are poached and their shells simmered in milk to extract every last drop of flavour. That infused milk becomes the base of an unapologetically rich sauce bound with Gruyère, mild Cheddar, Manchego and Parmesan, enriched further with egg and a splash of white wine vinegar for brightness. Bite-sized chunks of lobster are folded through the pasta before the whole dish is baked until bubbling and golden.
It is served with a side of hot honey cornbread, a tender, buttermilk-based loaf sweetened with honey warmed through with a Scotch bonnet chilli, alongside green beans tossed in garlic butter and finished with a squeeze of lemon. Comfort food elevated, but never straying too far from its roots.
Max Fosh embraces the beige
YouTuber and comedian Max Fosh has been refreshingly upfront about his culinary upbringing, admitting it involved “a lot of beige food”. His chicken parmo, which he serves with garlic-salted chips, suggests he has not entirely abandoned the aesthetic.
The parmo itself is a gloriously indulgent affair: flattened chicken breasts, breaded in seasoned flour, egg and panko, shallow-fried until crisp, then topped with a quick tomato sauce, a blanket of béchamel and a generous snowfall of grated Red Leicester. It is finished under the grill until the cheese bubbles and browns, and served alongside chips tossed in garlic powder, sea salt and, for the brave, a pinch of MSG.
The accompanying béchamel is classic technique, butter and flour cooked to a sandy roux, loosened with warm milk and finished with Parmesan and a whisper of nutmeg. The tomato sauce is equally unfussy: garlic softened in olive oil, tomato purée, passata, dried oregano and basil, simmered until rich and glossy. It is, in essence, the kind of plate that asks for nothing more than a fork and a willingness to embrace joy in its most uncomplicated form.
How to watch the series continue
Celebrity MasterChef continues on BBC One on Tuesday 1 September at 9pm, with the next heat airing on Wednesday at 9pm and the quarter-final on Friday at 8pm. Episodes are also available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
Why it Matters
Celebrity MasterChef has long straddled the line between entertainment and genuine culinary inspiration, and this series is no exception. The dishes showcased by Steel, Underwood and Fosh reveal something deeper about the people cooking them: Steele’s fierce Thai flavours speak to heritage and identity, Underwood’s mac and cheese to memory and family, and Fosh’s parmo to a cheerfully unpretentious approach to food that refuses to apologise for its pleasures. For home cooks, these recipes offer both technical lessons and a reminder that great food often starts with the dishes that mean something personal, whether that means a grandmother’s kitchen, a childhood teatime or, in Fosh’s case, a steadfast commitment to the joy of beige.