Local home cook hopes to ignite new beginnings on MasterChef Canada

Edmonton home cook Veronica McRae was one of three chefs sent home on season premiere of MasterChef Canada Thursday.

A home cook from Edmonton will be one of 15 contestants bringing the heat to the MasterChef Canada kitchen when the cooking reality competition show premieres for its eighth season Thursday night.

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Veronica McRae has been an avid fan of the show since it was released in 2010 – watching all the episodes – and she described the “surreal” zoom call from the show producers telling her she had made the cut from thousands of amateur chefs wanting to be on the show.

“I looked very much like a stay-at-home mom with sweatpants and a floppy bun and caterpillar eyebrows,” McRae told CTV News Edmonton while sitting in her home kitchen, recounting her surprise.

“I was like, ‘What is life like?’”

The 45-year-old Cree-Métis woman is the founder of The Good Place – a social enterprise she started to empower and bring healing to the Indigenous community through reclamation, food security and sharing of Canadian history.

“As an Indigenous woman, I wanted to bring representation to television in the culinary world and advocate for food security and hopefully be a positive role model for Indigenous youth,” McRae said, adding she also wanted to challenge herself and be an example of bravery to her four daughters.

While she can’t give away any clues about what happens this season, she said her biggest takeaway has been the bond she formed with the other contestants. McRae said the experience has also given her new-found confidence and inspired her to dream.

“There’s other really exciting things beyond MasterChef that are coming down the pipe for me that I cannot wait to share with everybody, so I’m just so excited for what the future holds.”

Bhu Chana, a 29-year-old high school teacher from Calgary, is the only other contestant from Alberta on this season of MasterChef Canada.

New season of MasterChef also debuts three new judges

The new season also brings three new judges - Craig Wong, Mary Berg, and Hugh Acheson – who appeared on CTV Your Morning Edmonton on Thursday ahead of the first episode.

“I always think of when something goes wrong, it’s a lesson,” said Berg, a former contestant herself and winner of Season 3 almost a decade ago. “So we definitely don’t pull punches.”

Acheson, who joked he was the “mean” judge, added that the pressure will definitely be on this season.

“I’m just being honest. I’m also empathetic,” he explained. “But then again, when it comes to food – I don’t care about your feelings.”

It’s not all hard feelings though, as Wong described the spirit of the competition show is really about spreading the joy of cooking.

“I think it’s about getting home cooks to be creative and to really get excited about cooking,” Wong said.

In the first episode, the contestants will be asked to make some of the judges’ specialty dishes.

MasterChef Canada premieres on CTV, online at ctv.ca, and on the CTV app. The show will then move to Tuesday nights next week, with a second helping of episode one on Oct. 7 and new episodes returning on Oct. 14.

All episodes are available to stream on Crave the next day.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Galen McDougall, CTV Your Morning Edmonton