In this week’s episode of “MasterChef Junior,” the top 18 best home cooks between the ages of 8 and 13 compete in a series of challenges. This week, they face their first team challenge and later, they batlle it out in a stinky elimination test.

Judges Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot and Christina Tosi tell the contestants about the mechanics of their team challenge. The 18 contestants will be divided into three groups of six. The members of each team will fall in line on consecutive stations, where each member needs to prepare one layer of an American classic, the 7-layer dip.

The teams:

  1. Ian (team leader): Jesse, Amaya, Zac, JJ, Mia.
  2. Avery (team leader): Adam, Jaeclyn, Derek, Kaitlyn, Tae-Ho.
  3. Kaya (team leader): Addison, Sam, Corey, Nate, Kamilly

The first to finish piling up layers of baked beans, salsa, corn, guacamole, lettuce, sour cream and cheese wins. As a bonus, the winning team captain also gets a chance to dunk a judge’s face into the dip.

Kaya surges ahead and gives her team an early lead. However, the other two teams catch up in the midway point. In the end, Ian’s team manages to edge out the others, and Christina’s face is dunked into the large bowl. Because this is “MasterChef Junior,” things would not be complete if Gordon and Graham didn’t get dunked in the dip as well.

After winning the relay challenge, all six members of Ian’s team are exempted from the elimination challenge. They also get the advantage of choosing the set of ingredients that the other contestants have to cook with.

The winning team chooses between Christina’s box of spicy ingredients, Graham’s stinky box and Gordon’s wrinkly box. Everyone returns to the “MasterChef” Kitchen and the winning team informs the other contestants that they have chosen Graham’s stinky box. The box is full of ingredients like fish sauce, stinky cheese, truffle oil and garlic, among others.

Addison presents the winning dish of the night, a Thai tom kha gai soup with fish sauce. She added garlic chicken meatballs and rosewater rice. The combination is unusual but Christina is amazed. The flavours are bold and flavourful, and Addison proves herself a force to be reckoned with.

Nate’s ribeye steak cooked with rosemary and garlic also stands out. He garnished his dish with boiled potatoes, seared asparagus and blue cheese.

The bottom three dishes are then called out. Corey, Jaeclyn and Adam all fall short of the judges’ expectations. Luckily for Corey, his handmade farfalle pasta is enough to keep him safe.

Unfortunately, Jaeclyn served raw shrimp in her kebab and the pineapple she used included the tough, fibrous core. She was also too conservative in her use of the stinky star ingredients. Adam also ends up going home after he struggled with his fresh pasta. He failed to let it rest before rolling it out and he ended up with thick, uneven noodles. He also used truffle oil to fry his anchovies and the flavour was overpowering.

Next week, only 16 contestants remain in the “MasterChef Junior” Kitchen. The series airs every Friday at 8:00 pm ET on FOX.

Watch scenes from this episode in the video below:

Source: YouTube/FOX

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