MasterChef Australia is back, and this year’s contestants are being put through their paces as we edge closer to the finale. If you’re behind on episode recaps and find yourself wondering, “Who was eliminated from MasterChef tonight?” We’re here to keep you up to date with the latest updates in this space.
We’re now getting towards the spiciest part of the season, as we’ve moved past the top-10-contestant mark for MasterChef Australia 2024.
Let’s dig in, shall we?
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Who has left MasterChef Australia 2024 so far?
Follow along below as we recap the most recent MasterChef Australia eliminations and what sent each of these talented contestants home.
James Holmes
The first elimination for this season of MasterChef Australia was James Holmes. After a challenge asked the contestants to build a dish inspired by their food dreams, the primary school teacher from WA was unfortunately sent packing.
On his stuffed squid dish, he shared that, “In the end, I tried to go for something I thought was vibrant, interesting and stood out. Unfortunately, it stood out for the wrong reasons.”
But despite his departure from the series, the cook is still incredibly keen to remain in the kitchen:
“It really has confirmed to me that food is something I love and that I want to continue,” he said via 10 Play.
“I went in there with no delusions of grandeur, so if I have to peel peppers for ages or chop onions, that’s what needs to be done! It’s still really enjoyable and definitely something I want to keep going at.”
On leaving the MasterChef kitchen, Holmes shared a recipe for pickled onions with Lifehacker Australia, which you can find here.
Steph Griffen
Steph was the next cook eliminated from MasterChef Australia after a challenge set by Jaime Oliver heated things up in the kitchen.
The task asked cooks to recreate a recipe that has been on the menu at Jaime’s father’s pub for 15 years: ‘Trevor’s Chicken’.
“[In] the first elimination, there were so many of us and I felt super confident. I knew it wasn’t going to be me. I felt it in my gut,” she told 10 Play. “But this one, I was feeling very uneasy and super overwhelmed. I think those nerves got the better of me, I was too much in my head,” she shared.
Jonathan Hooper
On Sunday night, Andy Allen’s mum, Maree, brought three dishes to the MasterChef Australia contestants and asked them to reinvent them for the kitchen. This challenge eventually led to Jonathan’s departure from the season.
Jonathan attempted Maree’s Fruit Salad Slice but shared that a distracted mindset let him down in the challenge.
“I probably wasn’t in the best headspace for that [challenge]… I was really, really homesick. I wanted to be home and I think it came across in my food,” he shared via 10 Play.
“I was unsure of myself and I wasn’t feeling good going into that cook,” he continued. “I wasn’t as switched on or as motivated as I normally would be.”
Khristian Walker
Our fourth elimination episode saw contestant Kristian Walker leave the MasterChef Australia kitchen.
On Tuesday night, the challenge set for the bottom chefs was to produce a complex dessert by Jean-Christophe. Speaking about his departure, Khristian shared that he went into the pressure test worried he may be asked to create a dessert dish.
“Desserts are not my forte, as much as I love eating them and making them,” he told 10 Play. “The idea of what potential dessert they could pull out for us to make was something I was dreading.”
In saying that, the cook is aware that the dish was an incredible challenge and he’s proud he attempted it.
“I kept thinking, if this was the dish that sent me home, I was not going to be upset,” Khristian admitted. “Obviously, I’d be sad the journey would be over, but what a dish to send you home!”
Lily Davies
Lily’s time in the MasterChef Australia kitchen came to an end after a blind taste test left her feeling completely disoriented.
The cooks were asked to identify ingredients while blindfolded and the challenge was one that absolutely threw Lily’s senses off.
“It’s honestly the most discombobulating thing,” she told 10 Play, “you don’t have any sense or awareness of where you are, and it makes you realise how much you eat with your eyes. I know people always say that, but it’s so true.
“It’s absolutely impossible, and it throws everything off. Suddenly you feel like you can’t even smell!”
Following the blind taste test, Lily was asked to produce a dish using only the ingredients from the taste test, but at this point she felt “deflated,” she shared. And eventually, she “…just had the gut instinct that I was going at that point”.
Lourdes Leschen
After a challenge that saw the contestants having to replicate Liam Downes’ Smoked Egg Yolk Raviolo, Lourdes was sadly asked to pack her apron and head home.
“I was worried about making that beautiful pasta dough, having the layers of green dough interconnected with the standard egg yolk dough was something I had never done before,” she told 10 Play on the challenge.
Juan De La Cruz
Sunday’s MasterChef elimination challenge saw Juan get a little mixed up with his instructions and produce a dish he wasn’t happy with.
“I couldn’t get out of my head of how am I going to bring Vietnamese flavours to my dish,” Juan told 10 Play.
“I never paid attention to the actual challenge, that it wasn’t Vietnamese, it was ingredients. So, in the end, [I was] trying to fit Vietnamese into Latin cooking and I got really stressed with all that in my head.”
“It ended up being not what I wanted to do in the end,” he shared.
Snezana Calic
Guest judge Anna Polyviou shook the contestants with her challenging Sunny Side Up dessert, and sadly it was this pressure test that sent Snezana packing.
Speaking with 10 Play she shared that the yolk was a particularly difficult element to master, “How do you make a yolk? How does it hold its shape and doesn’t leak out? I was freaking out,” she said.
“I wasn’t sure about the flavour… I wasn’t sure what was going on inside, but I was so happy that my egg yolk was still there at the end, it looked like an egg! I felt good I had plated it up, but on the inside I felt there might be something off. You never know until you cut into it.”
Stephen Dennis
Another egg challenge spelled disaster for Stephen Dennis who packed his apron up over the weekend.
A dish that required “egg in an interesting way” was the cook’s undoing, sadly.
“I’ve cooked with eggs a lot, so I was pretty confident that I was going to be fine,” he told 10 Play.
“Going into the challenge I wasn’t worried at all, but as I went through I started having cracks come apart and I suddenly realised I wasn’t working as well as I normally do. I wasn’t as calm as I normally was.”
Unfortunately, two of the three eggs Steve cooked didn’t achieve the running yolk he had been hoping for.
“I needed the runny egg yolk to make the sauce balanced. I’m good at balancing flavours in sauces and I knew that, without the runny egg yolk, it wasn’t going to be successful,” he said.
David Tan
A challenge brought to the contestants by guest judge Rick Stein saw David attempting a seafood dish he didn’t feel incredibly confident with.
Speaking with 10 Play he said:
“I don’t have a repertoire of seafood dishes, let alone raw fish, and I’ve never done anything like that at home.
“I was freaking out… I had this inspiration from a cookbook and was like, you know what? I’m going to send it super hard. It was the best idea I had.”
A slight imbalance in flavours was what sent the MasterChef cook home this week, sadly. However, David shared that he is happy with the work he has done in the competition.
“I went with what I used to cook for myself at home. Is it a fancy dish? No. Is it a dish I make at home? Yes. Is it my best work compared to other stuff? No, but it was the best I could do on the day with the level I was at.”
David was the cook who brought us this exceptional soup dish during the series. See if you can whip it up at home yourself!
Sue Bazely
After a challenge set by guest judge Curtis Stone, Sue Bazely’s time in the MasterChef kitchen sadly came to an end.
Initially, she had thought the cook along challenge would be a breeze, but was surprised to find this wasn’t the case.
“When I walked in I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this! This is my kind of challenge, better than a pressure test.’ How wrong was I?” She told 10 Play.
“Curtis was seriously on a mission to test us and it was super, super fast,” she continued.
“There was a bit of breathing room to catch up [in the Jamie Oliver challenge], but not this. This was full-on, an overload for the senses and I feel as though I got lost pretty early.”
Josh Clarke
A plant-based pantry challenge sadly saw Josh Clarke say goodbye to the MasterChef Australia competition.
The cook’s attempt to create a classic steak using just carrots ultimately left him with a dish he shares he could have executed better.
“I wanted to push myself and try and expand my repertoire of tricks, so it was a difficult one but, looking back, would I change it? No. Could I have executed it better? One hundred per cent,” he told 10 Play.
“There was a niggling feeling in me from the very beginning, before the time on the clock started, that I wasn’t very confident about this dish,” Josh added.
Gill Dinh
After a sticky dessert challenge from guest judge Adriano Zumbo during Sweet Week, Gill was sadly sent packing. An over-baked creme caramel was the dish that undid it all, but as a whole, Gill shared with 10 Play that she was incredibly proud of her efforts.
“I think you can see the moment that my heart shatters into a million pieces,” she said. “Honestly, I couldn’t have been more proud of myself at the end of that week and… the elimination made me feel so heartbroken because I was so proud of all my efforts.
“The fact that I tackled something that was pretty much destined for me to lose… it just felt like it wasn’t in my favour to win, and the one time I tried my hardest to study, practice, and be on top of that it still didn’t work in my favour,” she continued. “It was, in all honesty, very deflating but reflecting back now it was the best week I’ve ever had.”
Alex Crisp
A pressure test set by chef Hugh Allen was the challenge that sent MasterChef contestant Alex home, sadly, with the ‘Banksia Pod’ dessert leaving her “dumbfounded”.
“The minute I saw the dish I was wigging myself out,” Alex told 10Play.
“It was just a tragedy from the get-go. I spent so much time on the damn coffee gel that everything else after that had this roll-on effect of being a bit disastrous, everything took longer than it should have and I was playing it to the wire.”
“But you know what? It all ended up on the plate and for me, that’s what I set out to do,” Alex said, adding that she was “proud but also disappointed in different ways”.
Sumeet Saigal
An Invention Test lead to Sumeet packing up her MasterChef apron on Wednesday, June 19. Reimagining bacon and eggs was the challenge the contestants were asked to complete and in the end, it was the eggs that let Sumeet down.
In the end, however, she left the competition feeling nothing but grateful.
“When you sign up for something like MasterChef, it’s a cooking competition and you need to walk in with your eyes on the prize, but you need to also accept the reality that there is only going to be one winner,” she told 10 Play.
“When they revealed that it was my time to go, the most pronounced emotion that I felt was gratefulness. That’s the honest truth,” Sumeet said.
Lochy Whittle
After a nerve-wracking time auction challenge in the MasterChef kitchen, Lochy’s journey on the show sadly came to an end.
Although the cook came into the challenge with the most time under his belt, he was also under pressure to deliver on his dish.
“Definitely a double-edged sword with all that time,” he told 10 Play, “and I guess that time frame was something I wasn’t that used to in the kitchen but once I started cooking by myself, that was a very weird experience.
“I felt like all eyes were on me, I felt like I was either going to slice myself or something just absolutely stupid because I knew everybody was watching,” he said.
Darrsh Clarke
Our top five cooks were decided on July 2, with Darrsh Clarke’s elimination after a pressure test where the contestants were asked to produce five finished dishes.
“Seeing it for the first time, I didn’t really know what to expect,” Darrsh told 10 Play.
“When they said we had to make five, that’s when I was like okay, it’s going to be a really hard cook today and I need to give myself time because time management in the last pressure test I was in made me a bit unstuck.
“That was something I was hyper-conscious about, with a dish like that presentation was everything.”
We’ll keep updating this one as the season continues along, so be sure to check back regularly! Additionally, you can catch some clever cooking tips and recipes from eliminated MasterChef Australia contestants with our series MasterChef at Home – check that out next here.
MasterChef Australia airs Sunday – Wednesday at 7:30 pm on 10 and 10 Play
Image Credit: Network 10/Instagram
This article has been updated since its original publish date.
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