10 Best And 10 Worst Dishes On MasterChef

Spilling sauces and hot chunks of meat on countertops, overhead timers racing down, and scathing commentary from celebrity chefs. Passionate home cooks, anxious faces before judges, and hopeful hands presenting plates of food with as much tenderness as you would an expensive gemstone. It's hard not to associate this imagery with culinary competitions, most popular among them being MasterChef. With 11 seasons and a 12th about to air, US MasterChef has amassed millions of fans around the world and boasts an infamous entourage of celebrity chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot, Christina Tosi, and Joe Bastianich. It's inspired spin-offs and collected awards including the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Art Direction for a Multi-Camera Series and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Reality Programs.

At the core of MasterChef are the dishes. Since the first episode aired on July 27th, 2010, many dishes have come out of the MasterChef kitchen. From colossal flops to triumphs, some dishes are simply unforgettable. We've rounded up some that have made even the most intimidating judges crumble with delight and others that have stunned them into silence out of sheer horror. These are the 10 best and 10 worst dishes to be presented at the US MasterChef tasting table.

The sordid underbelly of a reality television show like MasterChef is that even though viewers might be wholly invested in the home cooks and their journeys throughout the competition, there is also some pleasure to be derived from the drama. This is where the most horrible plates of food shine brightest. The harsh truth is that you might not remember a judge's glowing praises, but you'll definitely recall a plate that's dumped in the bin.

Following Courtney Lapresi's Season 5, Episode 2 honey cake triumph, she chose Whitney Bray to compete in the elimination test. Whitney's Caribbean meatloaf with lemongrass and soy sauce served on a bed of sweet potato mash and a side of green beans, left the judges entirely underwhelmed. Gordon called it a "TV dinner that's unfortunately turned into a TV disaster," and then apologized ... to the meatloaf! The only apologies Whitney received after that rough judgment was when she was subsequently eliminated.

Season 5 contestants were again told to go head-to-head in a surf and turf challenge in episode 7, in pairs chosen by Courtney. They were given five minutes to grab all the ingredients they needed to make the classic marriage of seafood and red meat. Dan Wu and Josh "Cutter" Brewer almost immediately floundered. By the time Gordon asked whether they were on the same page, or even just okay, he was met with a deafening silence.

What they presented was essentially two separate dishes on a single plate. One was seared venison loin on a bed of cauliflower and parsnips, while the other was seared ahi tuna on a three-radish salad. True to form, Cutter expressed exactly how upset he was about the whole task, while Dan said he was willing to take responsibility. 

A seething Gordon ranked the combination among the worst dishes ever served up in the competition, while Joe fetched the bin and made the contestants "do the honors" of dumping the plate themselves. Ouch. Unsurprisingly, they ended up in the pressure test and neither of them was eliminated.

MasterChef sure does love a dramatic ingredient reveal. Season 5's ninth episode saw the contestants open their mystery boxes to find a knife jabbed into the chopping board before a giant smoky box slowly lifted to reveal rows of Alaskan wild king salmon. Each contestant picked up their own portion, which they were to filet themselves before creating a scrumptious salmon dish.

After much scrambling and a lot of smack talk from Cutter and Christian during the challenge, Christian earned a spot on the list of best dishes while Cutter faced the elimination test. His task: prepare a dish using a basket of Italian ingredients selected by judge Joe Bastianich. He delivered an "artisan" pizza that Gordon likened to kids' party food. Joe seemed more offended that Cutter didn't appreciate the cultural significance of the ingredients and spit it out, saying the pizza was a waste of everybody's time.

In an episode where contestants were given the choice between mystery boxes filled with high-end or basic ingredients, Leslie Gilliams came out on top. With that, he also got to choose which stuffed pasta the other contestants would have to prepare for the elimination test. Of course, he went for the most difficult option: caramelle. You might be familiar with ravioli and tortellini, but what about caramelle? Shaped like candy wrappers, this stuffed dish was once the hot new pasta shape for New York chefs (via Grub Street).

Contest Willie Mike nervously chuckled and said he had no idea what caramelle was ... then immediately went to work making a dessert caramelle. At least he didn't have his pasta machine taken away by Leslie as Daniel did. When he delivered his squash and apple caramelle, Gordon was already horrified about tasting what looked like, in his word, "regurgitated dog vomit." As one would do with things that resemble the half-digested contents of someone's stomach, Gordon immediately spat it out.

With the start of Season 6, Episode 4 set at California's original theme park, Knott's Berry Farm, there can only be smiles, cotton candy, and joyous adrenalin going around, right? Not when MasterChef is the rollercoaster you're riding. That's especially true when one team captain starts the challenge by saying it doesn't matter whether or not the food is amazing, as long you're smiling. With that philosophy, five members of the Blue Team found themselves up for elimination at the pressure test.

The challenge: bake 12 fragrant cinnamon rolls. Tommy presented a box of matcha and pistachio cinnamon rolls that Gordon said was a sick box that should come with a health warning to not be opened in broad daylight. As Tommy had said in his confessional: "I don't even eat cinnamon rolls." Fortunately for him, Darah's performance was deemed worse, and he survived the elimination.

In Season 8, Episode 13's pair challenge, Adam Wong and Caitlin Meade struggled to use chicken and potatoes to represent themselves with Japanese fried chicken with miso-potato purèe and a sake slaw. A pretty peeved Christina Tosi questioned their rationale for presenting a plate when they hadn't tasted all of the elements together. 

Even worse, a seething Gordon described it as a "soggy disgusting nugget sat on a bed of unwanted slaw, over gummy s**t purèe that I'd give my grandad to paste his f*****g house wallpaper, not to eat." With that mouthful, the former Harvard student and the personal trainer went head-to-head in an elimination challenge, where Adam made the unforgivable mistake of serving raw chicken.

With that, Adam — who reached the top 10 while only winning as part of a team — became the fifth contestant in the history of MasterChef to eliminate themselves without the judges announcing his axing.

In a competition where the work of your own hands is what gets you through round after round, nothing is quite as grueling as standing by while another person's doing can decide your fate. Throw into this mix some clashing personalities, a racing clock, and judges applying serious pressure, and you have a classic MasterChef tag team challenge. In Season 8, Episode 14, the contestants had to do just that, pairing up and then switching in and out while crafting a Mexican food platter.

Jeff Philbin immediately emerged as the more dominant member of his pair, while partner Caitlin Meade remained largely quiet. What they ended up presenting before the judges was nothing short of disastrous: broken up tortilla, lamb that resembled "dog food," and chicken so over-cooked that Gordon said, "my grandmother's flip-flops have more texture." The only impressive part of the dish? The china on which they served the chorizo.

One thing that infuriates MasterChef judges more than anything else is being served raw proteins. It's not even necessarily about the taste, as raw proteins can be quite dangerous for anyone to ingest. For instance, you can be infected by salmonella from eating poultry and meat that have not been cooked properly. While other delicacies, such as blowfish, can even kill you if not handled and prepared appropriately (via BBC).

After a mystery box in which the contestants had to prepare black cod in Season 4, Episode 6, the judges announced that one dish was particularly appalling. Howard Simpson looked around during his confessional while wondering who made "sashimi," then got called to the judges' table. Not a fork or a knife had touched his black cod, as the judges already knew that it was still raw. Joe Bastianich silently picked up the plate, declared that it was among "the kinds of dishes [that] send you home," and proceeded to dump it in the trash.

For a dish that's praised for being a wonderful use of kitchen scraps, meatloaf sure has tripped up several contestants on this list.

Unfortunately for Dan Wu, his was yet another case of failed meatloaf. Having stepped up to the judging table with plenty of confidence in season 5, Dan presented a ground veal and pork short-ribs meatloaf with shiitake mushrooms and kimchi. In classic unimpressed style, Gordon declared that the meatloaf was not only disgusting, but one of the worst things he'd ever tasted. What's more, he said, Dan's cooking was out of control and he had embarrassed the meatloaf. 

Dan earned himself a spot in the bottom three contestants, but fortunately for him, Whitney's meatloaf was worse and he got to compete for another day in the MasterChef kitchen. He even eventually opened his own restaurant, Atomic Ramen, where he never has to make meatloaf again.

The beauty of a fellow contestant choosing the tag team challenge pairs is that they can be strategic, deviously creating duos they know will crumble. This is exactly what Jason did in Season 8, Episode 14 when he placed Eboni and Yachecia together to create a Mexican food platter, rather poetically saying that "two loud voices may not sing together in harmony in the kitchen."

After 90 minutes of dismissing each other's instructions, the pair created a messy board with missing elements and began to argue with each other at the judges' table. While Yachecia thought they struggled to communicate, Eboni insisted that she'd had to put most of the tray together herself. Back and forth they went until the only elements that the judges somewhat enjoyed were the chicken lollipops and churros. Fortunately for the pair, that was enough to keep them in the competition after they had landed in the bottom two.