‘MasterChef’: Bacon makes everything better

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Do these people really not know how to play the pressure game?

For the second week in a row, someone has been sent home for failing to have the strategy of, say, a fifth grader. The losing team has had to submit to the pressure test: Last week, one by one, they had to try to guess as many ingredients as possible in chef Graham Elliot’s Texas-style chili. This week, they were presented with a table laden with a variety of cooking ingredients and had to identify as many as possible.

Now. Logic would dictate that you would identify as many of the easy ones as possible, and rack up as many points as possible, right?

But nooooooo.

These folks are either feeling the pressure so much that they just cannot think straight — quite possible — or they are just trying to show off — also quite possible. Either way, Tony was sent home this week because he misidentified a star fruit as a passion fruit. (Hint: Hey Tony, the star fruit is the one shaped like a star.)

That was just one of the brutal challenges. What did we learn from the others?

--You cannot frost a warm cupcake. So when you have only 45 minutes to make a cupcake, you gotta get creative.

--Bacon makes everything better. I didn’t realize that there were some people who still needed to learn this, but the players had to serve up burgers to truckers. And truckers (and everyone else) love big, sloppy, messy burgers with toppings galore and lots and lots of bacon.

--You can’t beat Iron Chef Cat Cora at her own game. The players had to duplicate her halibut dish in a bid to avoid elimination, and Sharone had the chance to catapult himself to the finale if he could best her dish. That did not happen. But Jake turned in a dish that was worthy of Cat’s lavish praise, and Faruq was sent home because he overcooked his fish. Frankly, I think Slim should have gone home over Faruq, but no one asked me.

We also learned that Cora is apparently so petite you could pick her up and put her in your pocket.

So. Now that we’re a few weeks in, what do you make of this show so far?

I, for one, would like a way to know all of the ingredients that do not get mentioned in the pressure tests.

— Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch