MasterChef: The Professionals is a BBC television competitive cooking show which aired on BBC Two from 2008 to 2019, and on BBC One since 2020. It is a spin-off from the main MasterChef series, for professional working chefs. Introduced in 2008, Gregg Wallace and India Fisher reprised their roles as co-judge and voiceover respectively. Michel Roux Jr., a two-Michelin-star chef, assisted, from 2009, by his sous-chef Monica Galetti. Since 2011, Sean Pertwee has taken over Fisher's role as voiceover.
In 2014, Roux Jr left the show due to "a conflict in commercial interests". Marcus Wareing replaced him. In 2022, Galetti announced that she was leaving the show; she was replaced as a judge by Anna Haugh for the 2022 series. On 23 March 2023, it was announced by Galetti on Instagram that she would be returning to the show as a judge for the sixteenth series, and she did so when it was broadcast from 23 October 2023 onwards.
Format
Typically, the show runs for seven weeks and twenty-five episodes (reduced to eighteen from Series 15 onwards) transmitted from early November until Christmas, although the precise number of shows per week, number of contestants, the running order and nature of the challenges and the number of chefs eliminated at each round has varied from series to series. There are four weeks of "heats" (the final show of each week being a quarter final), a "knockout" week, a semi-final week and a finals week. Below is a synopsis of a typical series:
Heats
Each heat week begins with six chefs per show (this was cut to four per show in Series 15). The three (or four) remaining chefs then participate in the quarter-final at the end of that week.
Skills test (Series 2 onwards): The professional judges demonstrate the preparation of a specific dish, or the preparation of an ingredient. The contestant is then required to reproduce that dish in a specific time limit – typically 15–20 minutes. The judges then taste the contestant's attempt and give feedback. In Series 2–4, Monica Galetti would eliminate 2 of the 6 contestants at this stage, meaning only four went through to cook for Michel Roux Jr. Signature dish: The contestants are then given one hour to prepare their signature dish which will showcase their skills and abilities. This is then scrutinised by the judges, who then eliminate three of the six (two of the four from Series 15 onward) contestants, based on their performance in both this, and the skills test.
Quarter final
Invention test: The three surviving contestants from the heat are given 1 hour to invent a dish from a set larder of ingredients. The contestants are then given feedback. In Series 1 the invention test took place during the heats (before being replaced in Series 2 by the Skills Test, with the invention test being moved to the quarter-final). In some series four chefs competed in this round, which was reduced to three in the next round. Cook for the critics: The four (or three) contestants are required to prepare a three-course meal for a panel of three restaurant critics – typically Jay Rayner, Tom Parker-Bowles, William Sitwell, Grace Dent, Leyla Kazim and Jimi Famurewa. The meal is also sampled by the professional judges (but not Gregg Wallace). The contestants do not get feedback from the critics directly. Based on this challenge and performance in the invention test, one chef is eliminated, and the remainder go through to knockout week or the semi-final
Knockout Week
Typically 10 chefs are left by this stage. The precise challenges have varied over the series. From Series 15 onwards, Knockout Week was dropped and the competition progressed directly to the semi-final.