Mystery Box Challenge 1: The top 22 contestants were faced with their first Mystery Box Challenge. In the box, there were ingredients that the contestants had themselves left behind in their own kitchen when they left to travel to the competition. The cooks had 60 minutes to prepare their dishes. The top three dishes were Katrina's pork schnitzel with braised cabbage and Christmas peas, Dan's savory eclair with creamy mushroom filling, and Hetal's coconut curry soup with red chili chutney and Cilantro mintbasil oil. The judges decided that Dan was the winner of the first Mystery Box Challenge and received the advantage heading into the season's first Elimination Test challenge.
Elimination Challenge 1: For the Elimination Test, the contestants were required to make a stunning apple pie by Christina Tosi. For winning the Mystery Box challenge, Dan was immune from the challenge. He also got to choose as many contestants to receive immunity as he wanted by presenting them with apples that he took from the MasterChef pantry. Targeting Derrick, Mateo, and Stephen, he chose to save Hetal, Amanda, Claudia, Justin, Shelly, Nick, Jesse, Kerry, Tommy, Ailsa, Katrina and Darah. The remaining 9: Brianna, Charlie, Christopher, Derrick, Mateo, Olivia, Sara, Stephen and Veronica had to bake a stunning apple pie in 90 minutes. The judges also announced that two cooks would be sent home at the end of this challenge. During cooking, Olivia told Gordon that she doesn't know if she will be doing a crust for her apple pie, to which Gordon reminded her that Christina asked for an apple pie (which has a crust). After much hesitation from her, she finally was convinced by Gordon to do a crust. Once the time was up, Veronica's apple pie was up to be judged first. Her apple pie with caramel and walnut had a bizarre and messy presentation, but all the judges agreed that her pie was absolutely delicious with a nice use of cinnamon. Christopher was very nervous because he had never made an apple pie before. His apple pie had maple syrup and bourbon filling, but during judging, he got very defensive to Gordon about his use of corn starch in the pie, told Gordon to "just eat it" and expressed that he always got picked on, to which Gordon calmly told him to relax as he too himself has been picked on a lot in his life and the proof of his abilities will be in the food. Christopher's pie was deemed delicious and the pastry was cooked beautifully and had amazing color. Olivia vocally expressed that she hated her apple pie so much that she would rather shave her head than serve the pie to the judges. Her pie was made with goat cheese and blueberries, and the judges thought everything in her apple pie tasted nice and balanced except for the goat cheese, which tasted very out of place. Derrick made a Granny Smith apple pie with orange zest and brown sugar, Gordon thought the pie was delicious but not enough apples inside it. Stephen made an apple pie withmascarpone and caramel, which contained nicely flavoured apples, but Christina pointed out that his pastry crust still tasted raw and was undercooked. Charlie made Grandma's apple pie. Graham thought his pie was good but lacked techniques. Mateo'sginger apple pie with cardamon and salted caramel was panned by the judges for the thickness of the apples. Its pastry was too thin to sustain the weigh of the apple and the pie disintegrated when cut, and Christina pointed out that the ginger was overpowering the rest of the components in the pie. Sara's pecan apple pie with cinnamon and caramel sauce was delicious and Graham said it was like "a slice of autumn". Brianna's apple pie with ginger and mint received bad reviews - Christina commended her for her lattice work, but the pie was very watery and literally like "apple soup". With the best apple pie, Christopher was declared winner of the elimination challenge. The three worst pies of the night belonged to Brianna, Olivia and Mateo. Mateo was the first to be eliminated, much to Dan's delight. After much deliberation from the judges, Brianna was the next home cook to be eliminated.
