I was on MasterChef – it cost me a grand just to buy the food I needed, I barely slept during filming and show runners even stitched me up with the wrong ingredients

Masterchef has returned to our screens for a Celebrity special, with contestants hoping to impress John Torode and Gregg Wallace. 

The high-pressured cooking competition usually sees 32 professional chefs enter the MasterChef kitchen in a bid to become the 2023 Champion. 

The show runs for seven weeks, testing the chefs on their culinary skills across various high pressured challenges. 

And one former semi-finalist has given an insight into the intense environment and how much it costs to be involved. 

Anthony O’Shaughnessy, who applied for the show in 2018, spoke to Metro about his time on the show. 

I was on MasterChef – it cost me a grand just to buy the food I needed, I barely slept during filming and show runners even stitched me up with the wrong ingredients

Anthony O’Shaughnessy, who applied for the show in 2018, gave an insight into the intense environment and how much it costs to be involved

For his audition, Anthony revealed he had to take a pre-made dish to the producers, travelling all the way from his home in Teesside to Glasgow.

Once the chef, who now works as the Head Chef at Blackfriars Cookery School in Newcastle, was given a place on the show, he practiced dishes beforehand and explained that he spent around a thousand pounds on ingredients.

Anthony said: ‘You’re spending so much [money] on testing the dishes and so on and finding the time to do that.

‘I worked it out, I spent about a grand during the course of the show, just buying ingredients to test stuff with again and again.’

Whilst the show’s production buy the food for the MasterChef kitchen, things don’t always go to plan.

Anthony said: ‘I worked it out, I spent about a grand during the course of the show, just buying ingredients to test stuff with again and again.’

Anthony added: ‘There was one situation where I was going to make a parmo, and asked for orange cheddar cheese, but they didn’t get it because I don’t think it’s a southern thing.

‘They provided me with white cheese, normal cheddar.’

Anthony also revealed that filming days are lengthy for contestants who don’t stay where the studios are.

He was travelling between Teesside and London, meaning early morning and late nights.

He said: ‘I’d get in around two in the morning and then it was up at five o’clock for filming. It was really tiring.’

Snoochie Shy was the first star to be eliminated from Celebrity MasterChef as the new series kicked off on the BBC on Tuesday night

The first five celebrities donning aprons this week were This Morning’s Craig Doyle, Geordie Shore’s Charlotte Crosby, radio presenter Edith Bowman, Steps popstar Ian ‘H’ Watkins and Snoochie

It comes after Snoochie Shy was the first star to be eliminated from Celebrity MasterChef as the new series kicked off on the BBC on Tuesday night.

The radio DJ and presenter, 32, left the first heats after failing to impress judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode with her dishes.

The first five celebrities donning aprons this week were This Morning’s Craig Doyle, Geordie Shore‘s Charlotte Crosby, radio presenter Edith Bowman, Steps popstar Ian ‘H’ Watkins and Snoochie.

The series is kicking off with four Heat weeks of three episodes aimed at testing the celebrities’ skills in the kitchen. 

As she left she said: ‘It is sad to go home but I know a lot of disasters happened in that kitchen so I knew I was going! I am going to go home and have a glass of wine and put my feet up!’ 

MasterChef is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.