MasterChef has been setting pulses racing around the world for 35 years, if you can believe it, with the first episode airing in the UK in 1990.
Since then it’s captured fans across every continent and spawned a variety of international spinoffs.
One of those is the Spanish edition, and in 2020 it drew some controversy thanks to one contestant’s unconventional approach to cooking a partridge.
Saray Carrillo and her fellow contestants were set a 'farm to table' task that involved taking a whole carcass, feathers, beak, talons, innards and all, and preparing it ahead of cooking.
You might see the occasional YouTube short of someone expertly de-feathering, gutting, cutting and butterflying a game bird, but few of us would consider doing it for ourselves at home.
And, generally speaking, you don’t need to. After all, we get to remove ourselves from the grizzly reality by simply buying pre-prepared and packaged cuts from the supermarket.
It was certainly a rude awakening for some of the Spanish MasterChef contestants, not least for Saray Carillo.
The partridge needed to be de-feathered, boned, gutted, and filleted. It still had its head, too. The whole shebang.
Once the bird was prepared, the chefs then had carte blanche to cook it in whichever manner they preferred.
There are tonnes of options, of course, from roasting the majority of the carcass to simply serving up some grilled breast fillets.
Saray couldn’t get past her aversion to handling and preparing whole poultry, however, so she took a somewhat unconventional approach to the challenge.
The served dish makes for unsettling viewing: the whole bird, feathers and all, served atop some spring onions and garnished with three roasted tomatoes. ¡Que delicioso!
One of the judges can be heard saying, in Spanish: “This is never seen in MasterChef.”
The video of the incident went viral, with 7.7 million views as of March 2025.
Safe to say, the judges were less than impressed and promptly showed Saray the door.
Unfazed, she simply said 'Bye bye' as she left the show.
She later told the show’s producers: “I feel fine because I feel free.”
She added: “I don’t think I disrespected anyone at all.”
Presumably, the charred bird went straight in the bin.
Being a chef may appear glamorous, but there are plenty of uncomfortable realities to face if you want to be dubbed a ‘master’.
It’s a shame Gordon Ramsay wasn’t on-hand at the time to offer his opinion — he may well have blown the feathers off the thing.
Featured Image Credit: La 1Topics: Cooking
Rachael Davis