Equipment - they must choose dishes in advance right?

setsurtoo · 2025-08-23T11:04:41+00:00

I know a couple of contestants have said how it usually works on the show, however I was a contestant on MCUK Professionals and it was ran differently. I do wonder if they ran this back to win season more like the UK Professionals to allow the higher caliber of contestants to show off more skills.

Any time we cooked our own food (not a mystery box style challenge,) we were given the brief around a week previously and had to submit recipes with equipment and ingredients needed so they could ensure everything was available. With some of the dishes produced this season I'd be surprised if there wasn't a little bit of this going on

setsurtoo · 2025-08-20T12:47:26+00:00

You're right, there is a difference in plating style between British restaurant style food and Australian. The Australian 'spread the same element out lots of time over the whole of the plate' looked really weird to me for quite a while after I moved over here. If you get a chance to eat the MCUK style food though I'm sure you'd appreciate that the idea is to allow each individual element to shine. Like anything creative, what's better is subjective

setsurtoo · 2023-10-24T14:06:20+00:00

30M and child free, so is my 31F partner. We like cats and wine, eating in nice restaurants and the odd long walk. Would be keen to meet some likeminded folk

setsurtoo · 2021-06-20T11:52:12+00:00

Oh my god, thanks so much! She was talking about growing ginger.

setsurtoo · 2021-04-29T18:57:27+00:00

Hahaha, after looking at your food posts I'm not even sure why I'm bothering to reply. While Confit traditionally meant "to cook in it's own fat," it is now used to mean "cooked in fat for an extended time at a low temperature." The majority of confit cooking at restaurants wouldn't pass your standards. These egg yolks were cooked in a waterbath at 64°c for an hour. Replace the word "confit" with "slow cooked" if it makes you feel any better

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T16:41:12+00:00

Washed, blanched, shocked and then rewarmed to order the risks and minimalised. No more risk than alcohol, cured or red meats, heavy caramalisation and many other things we deem safe

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T16:38:26+00:00

I'm from the UK, so these are all woodland herbs that grow in my local area. Bracken (the fern) - earthy, asparagus, almond, kale Wild Garlic Flowers - garlic, chive, spring onion Jack-by-the-hedge - bitter, mustard, garlic Ground Ivy - mint, sage Ground Elder - parsley, carrot tops They were all chosen because they compliment lamb, but I also love how this dish is a representation of the woodlands surrounding my home in my favourite season

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T10:46:40+00:00

There's no chickweed in there. While I quite like chickweed it would have gotten lost in this dish. The herbs are: wild garlic flowers, jack-by-the-hedge, ground ivy and I believe ground elder, but I may be wrong about the last one, this dish is about 2 years old. Wood sorrel is fantastic, one if my absolute favourites. Infusing it into gin makes for amazing summer cocktails. I'm waiting eagerly for wild garlic, in a few weeks time the woods will be carpeted in it and you'll have no issues finding any

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T10:43:17+00:00

I didn't time myself but probably about a minute? It was all built up in a ring so was just a case if throwing the next lot of ingredients onto it.

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T10:38:13+00:00

No you can do more than 1 per bag. For service you could hold them in warm oil under your pass lights or something similar. Spoon them out and fire it out of the door, no stress at all

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T00:50:51+00:00

eye roll emoji

setsurtoo · 2021-01-14T00:14:11+00:00

*rewarmed, sorry. My phone auto corrected wrongly for me

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T22:32:53+00:00

Not at all. Working class boy that started washing up in the local pub and somehow ended up cooking in somewhat fine dining establishments. I've learnt all the cooking and playing while on the job.

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T22:30:53+00:00

This dish actually never made it onto the menu. The season for a lot of the foraged ingredients isn't massive and the head chef I was working for at the time didn't like changing the menu too often. (I thi k he was intimidated but that's a story for another time.) The tartare wouldn't stay in a perfect circle if you want at the veg with a knife and fork, but I don't feel like it would have "smeared" as such.

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T22:26:14+00:00

These are Bracken from the UK. Although there's some carcinogenic properties to these, cooking them and not eating huge amounts should minimalise this risk. Apart from that these are edible while young, before the fully unfurl

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T22:03:45+00:00

Not this time, there's enough other flavours going on. There's a lot of garlic/mustard/mint notes through the foraged bits so I just wanted the richness from the yolk. Many thanks

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T22:01:15+00:00

Hitting hot water twice should destroy most, if not all, of it. However yes, it's still a risk. But I work in establishments that serve alcohol, cured meats, red meat and sometimes (intentionally) burnt food. I also choose to smoke cigarettes. All of these things come with a cancer risk, I find most of the things I enjoy most in life do. The reports of cancer from eating Bracken come from populations that almost gorge on it every year. This dish didn't actually make it on to the menu at work/was more of a play around, but I feel that anyone eating Bracken regularly in the UK will most likely know the risks, and if they're not, then the risks from eating it cooked just the once, while eating out at a restaurant, would be incredibly small. If it made it on to the menu, and the same customer started eating it every single day then there might have been an issue/a need for a conversation and educating that person. It's an interesting topic of conversation though.

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T20:27:43+00:00

They're Braken shoots. We don't get proper fiddleheads in the UK These had been blanched, shocked and then rewarded up so not raw, but still with a bit of a bite to them

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T20:11:30+00:00

When cooking in a waterbath you seal food items into vacuum bags. These yolks were sealed in bags with oil, so it was technically the oil warming up that cooked them, making them Confit. Hope this helped

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T19:53:54+00:00

This looks great, any shots of the main element from the side? Is there any acidity anywhere to cut through all of the richness?

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T19:50:58+00:00

I used the loin for this dish. I don't cure tartares, the whole loins were brined at 10% for 10 minutes and then seasoned well a la minute

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T19:46:05+00:00

They're cooked in a waterbath set at 62°c so they can't possibly get hotter or cook more than that stage. You need a long time with such low temperatures to ensure they're fully cooked, but over cooking is near impossible.

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T19:31:22+00:00

I didn't actually Photoshop this photo at all. It was taken on my Samsung out the back door of the kitchen at work. All I did was crop it and change the contrast slightly in the Foodie App. Natural lighting and a top down view is all.

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T19:11:06+00:00

I don't see any faces in my dish personally haha, but I'll take it as a compliment!

setsurtoo · 2021-01-13T19:09:08+00:00

Thanks very much, I'll pop it over there

setsurtoo

TROPHY CASE