‘Celebrity MasterChef’ fans in hysterics over Michelle Collins’ cooking blunder

The last new set of five celebrity contestants were welcomed into the Celebrity MasterChef kitchen, including actress Michelle Collins, reality star Kem Cetinay, double Paralympic gold medallist Kadeena Cox, Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer and choreographer Johannes Radebe, and journalist, author and presenter Gavin Esler.

Michelle Collins is known for having played Cindy Beale in EastEnders for ten years, however, her great acting skills did not transfer to the MasterChef kitchen as viewers were left in stitches at her chaotic cooking.

The first test was the Under The Cloche Challenge, where each contestant had a mystery ingredient hidden under the cloche. Once uncovered, they must make a dish showcasing that ingredient. But, Michelle seemed not too happy that she got wild mushrooms as her ingredient.

As she began cooking her dish, Michelle hilariously said, “Oh, my God! I knew I should have done Dancing On Ice,” and her stress levels began to rise. “Michelle, how are you feeling?” Gregg asked a flustered Michelle, “Horrendous,” she responded. 

Michelle decided to make a mushroom soup for her dish, which John seemed to be worried about, due to his fear that the mushrooms may get lost amongst the other ingredients of potato, leek and cheese in the soup.

Her soup tasted good, however John described it as “more like a mushroom porridge,” as it was too thick.

The next test was The Street Food Challenge, where they had to taste and write down all of the ingredients they could identify in a specific street food dish, and then remake it. However, there are rogue ingredients put onto each tray that aren’t in the dish. The dish they had this time was a popular street food in Turkey called gozleme served with baba ghanoush. 

This dish was proving to be a bit of a nightmare for Michelle as she started having a flatbread fiasco. Instead of placing the dough and filling into a dry pan, she fried the dough like a pancake, then put in the filling and then fried it more. It was safe to say that they did begin to look a bit unusual.

For her baba ghanoush, John let out a big sigh, as she started frying aubergines with garlic and then burning the garlic. “Burnt garlic and aubergine puree is not very pleasant,” John said.

The judges were not that impressed with her dish, as Gregg discovered that the inside of the flatbread was not cooked and John described her dish as “Your aubergine puree has got lots and lots of parsley running through it, which is OK. You’ve burnt your garlic.” 

The final challenge required the celebrities to cook a dish they would make if they were hosting a dinner party. “I’ve never had a dinner party,” Michelle said, “I’ve had lots of drinks parties,” she added. 

She opted to return to the flatbread route, despite her previous palaver and cook a Lebanese chicken shawarma with hummus on a flatbread. 

Unfortunately, this flatbread met its disastrous fate just like her previous one as it burnt and fell apart, despite her valiant efforts of trying to ‘glue’ it back together with the hummus. “I’m never, ever going to cook a flatbread ever again. Ever,” were Michelle’s final words as she finished the dish.

Despite the flatbread failing, Gregg liked the red cabbage and the hummus, however, he didn’t appreciate the burnt and greasy flatbread. John said it was good, but there were a lot of bold flavours that seemed to drown out the chicken, which left Michelle feeling disappointed.

Michelle’s culinary efforts were unfortunately not enough to get her through to the next round and she was kicked off, which saddened fans. Nevertheless, her cooking efforts were enough to cheer up the viewers and make them laugh...

Celebrity MasterChef airs on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays on BBC1 at 9pm.