MasterChef‘s brutal twist week has claimed its final victim: fan favourite, Hayden Quinn.
Facing off in the first round of the elimination challenge against Tracy, cooking a Chinese inspired cuisine, Hayden’s dumplings didn’t quite match his competitor’s blue swimmer crab.
In round two, the contestants were presented with five different flavour pairings.
In the end it came down to Sarah C and Hayden, who had both chosen the beetroot and horseradish combination.
Unfortunately, the season three returnee’s rolled beef with thick beetroot and horseradish sauce failed to impress the judges and was overcooked.
It wasn’t the only shock of the night, with judge Jock Zonfrillo announcing fellow contestant, Ben Ungermann had left the competition and would not be returning.
Eagle eyed fans also took to twitter to question Hayden about what looked like an earpiece in the contestant’s ear.
Now, we chat to Hayden about his MasterChef experience, that earpiece speculation and Ben’s unexplained disappearance.
Hayden’s dish failed to impress the judges.
(Image: Instagram)How are you feeling after the elimination?
I’m feeling relieved. I think there is so much stress and energy that comes with the show, especially because it all happened for us so long ago, now I can move on with the next project and get excited about who’s going to win.
It’s a pretty good feeling to know that I gave it my best shot and had a lot of fun.
Why did you want to come back to MasterChef?
Obviously everyone wanted to come back and give it another crack, see if they could win.
For me it was more about challenging myself, having a lot of fun, learning and seeing some of the MasterChef alumni.
There’s that selfish side as well, it is a great opportunity to promote your brand. It was about really pumping up my show, Tasting Australia With Hayden Quinn.
I really wanted to be able to really give that the best launch pad it possibly could have and then at the same time try and take out the Back To Win title.
Hayden with fellow eliminated Back To Win contestant Dani Venn.
(Image: Instagram)What was it like going from a judge on Family Food Fight to a contestant again on MasterChef?
It’s a little bit weird. It’s a lot of the same team that works on both shows. So, it’s a very familiar place to be which is kind of nice
It’s much better and much nicer being the judge than the cook. I think that’s the moral of the story, if you get an opportunity to judge, take it, if you’ve got to cook you’ve got to deal with the stress that comes with it.
We saw the announcement from Jock last night that Ben had mysteriously left the competition, did you get to say goodbye and how was everyone feeling about it?
It’s much this season different because we don’t all live in the one big house like past contestants, we’ve got our own apartments, we share with one other person. It’s private. So there could be times where you don’t see anyone for a number of days, you might only see someone in the kitchen
Basically we turned up and Ben wasn’t there and Jock said what he said, that was it. I haven’t seen or heard from Ben since, so I know as much as you.
If you look closely, you’ll notice something dangling behind Hayden’s ear…
(Image: Instagram)Fans were questioning whether you were wearing an earpiece last night; can you explain what they might have been seeing?
It’s so funny. I think one of my favourite things is I like engaging with people on social media because I think it’s quite funny.
I told one person I had a direct earpiece to Matt Preston, and he was my little guide but it was literally just a pen in my hat like it has been every other episode, I just write a lot of notes and scribble so I can keep track of what I’m doing.
