Celebrity MasterChef: Episode 7

It’s the third and final week of heats, and the five new celebrities up for the culinary challenge are DJ and presenter Melvin Odoom, singer Una Healy, Paralympic gold medallist Lauren Steadman MBE, YouTuber and comedian Max Fosh, and actor and Loose Women panellist Sue Cleaver.

The first task for the five hopefuls is the signature dish round. It’s the celebrities’ calling card to the judges as they have 90 minutes to prepare a dish that tells Grace and Giorgio who they are as a cook. Who is destined to stand out from the off, and who might demonstrate they are going to need to learn fast?

Next, it’s time for their taste buds to be tested with some tantalising treats as the celebrities take on a palate test like no other. They need to identify a variety of different drinks, including champagne, orange juice and chai tea, but they must rely on taste only, as they will all be blindfolded throughout. Getting the answer wrong brings elimination from the challenge and the loss of their chance to win a significant advantage in the next round. Everyone hopes to out-taste their opponents but whether their taste buds are up to it remains to be seen.

Then it’s the final test of their culinary abilities in a brand new challenge for this year’s competition, the MasterChef cook-along. Giorgio dons his chef whites to cook one of his own signature dishes – grilled herb-crusted mackerel fillet with a tomato and caper salsa and a green salad. All the celebrities have to do is follow along and keep up with him. The winner of the challenge will be the celebrity whose dish looks and tastes the closest to Giorgio’s.

The celebrities work furiously, all keen to prove themselves to the judges because, at stake, is the ‘MasterChef Pin’, which affords the winner a ten-minute advantage in the next round.

All five will live to fight another day but performance in every challenge counts as there is only space for the best four in this week’s quarter-final, which they need to reach if they are to stay on track to becoming Celebrity MasterChef Champion 2026.