Now in its 11th season, MasterChef Australia has kickstarted the careers of some of our best-known celebrity chefs.

Interestingly, some of the show’s most successful alumni were not winners but runners-up. People like Poh Ling Yeow, who was defeated by Julie Goodwin in the first season but went on to star in three TV shows of her own; Callum Hann, the season 2 runner-up, who won the spin-off series MasterChef Australia All-Stars in 2012; and Ben Ungermann, runner-up of season 9 in 2017.

Dubbed the ice cream king of Australia, Ungermann has opened an ice cream parlour in his hometown Ipswich, cooked with Heston Blumenthal, appeared on MasterChef Holland and Indonesia, is a brand ambassador for Oxone, Cuisinart and Cargo Crew, and is now opening a second ice cream parlour in Bali.

Last month, Ungermann spoke at the Ubud Food Festival in Bali about what really goes on behind the scenes of reality TV cooking shows, and news.com.au was there to get the scoop.

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AUDITIONING

The first step was filling out an application form online. It was about 30 pages long, and it took me a whole day. From there the producers filtered out tens of thousands of applicants, and those who made the cut were invited to an audition in their state. In my case, it was a big room at a TAFE where mystery boxes had been set up on tables and we were told to cook something with whatever was underneath. My box had barramundi, oranges, potatoes, chocolate and tomatoes. I made pan-fried barramundi with a really nice seafood broth and was lucky enough to go through.

THE FIRST ELIMINATION

A month later, the top 50 were flown down to Melbourne for a cook-off in a huge shed where we prepared our signature dishes and met the judges for the first time. The producers kind of stitch you up by saying you have one hour exactly but they don’t tell you where anything is, so you could spend 15 minutes looking for your equipment and have only 45 minutes to cook. The drama you see on screen — none of it is fabricated — but they put you in these high-pressure situations because they want to see you crack. I saw some really good cooks who were off their game that day and got booted out just like that.

MEETING THE JUDGES

Once I finished my signature dish, I had to wheel it out on a trolley to another shed. In the show, it looks like you walk straight from one room to another but they’re 150 metres apart. I was praying I wouldn’t spill anything, and when I reached the next shed a producer told me, ‘I don’t want you to freak you out, but you’re going to meet the judges for the first time. Just act natural, be yourself, they’re going to taste your food’. When I walked in and saw them I thought OMG! I’ve been watching these guys on TV for eight years, and now here I am! But they were all pretty laid-back. They had to taste 50 dishes that day. Luckily, they liked mine, and I got through to the top 24.

LIVING IN THE HOUSE

Viewers don’t realise contestants on MasterChef sacrifice a year of their lives. The auditioning takes five months and then there are seven months living in a house with no wallet, no phone, no internet and no TV. For me, the first couple of weeks were really hard. All the other contestants were better cooks than me, but I studied and practised so much that by the end of the season I’d improved exponentially. We’d spend 12 to 14 hours a day filming, and every evening I’d study for another four or five hours and survive on three or four hours sleep. I never got used to the pressure and was always nervous going into the cook-offs, though I did learn to manage it. I know it sounds like a cliche, but I didn’t start performing well on the show until I started believing in myself.

BECOMING A FAMILY

When you’re put into a house with 24 strangers not everyone is going to get along — that’s just the way it is. Sometimes cookbooks went missing, and there were some pretty nasty arguments. But as time went on, we became a family. When you see contestants on the show hugging each other, it’s all real, there’s no acting involved. Think about it: You’re living together for seven months, and you have no contact with the outside world, so even if you fight, it’s like fighting with your brother or sister because you care for them and understand what they’re going through.

THE TOUGHEST JUDGE

When you watch MasterChef you get the impression George is the toughest judge, but he’s actually a big softie. George is a passionate person, and even when he’s very hard on you, it’s because he wants you to do better. Matt may look scary because the guy is a giant; he’s six-foot something and built like a horse. But he’s a phenomenal person and more understanding than the others because he’s not a chef; he’s a food critic. But Gary, on the other hand, is 100 per cent the toughest judge, and if he doesn’t like the taste of something, he can be brutal. He’ll tell you exactly what he thinks. And I clearly wasn’t his favourite.

FOOD GETTING COLD

All the food is served cold, and there’s a reason for that. At the start of the season, there are 24 contestants. When you watch the show from home, you may see five seconds of feedback from the judges, but each one of us actually gets about half an hour of feedback in the studio. That’s 12 hours where we’re all standing behind our benches. So while we’re cooking, the judges come over and taste all our food while it’s still warm. Once time is up, everything gets refrigerated except for the sauce because sauces have a high-fat content and congeal if refrigerated, so they heat it up in a microwave before it’s poured over the cold food. You also have to seriously over-season your food because once it goes cold it loses most of its taste. Now I have a problem — I still over-season everything.”

HIGHLIGHT OF THE SHOW

The two weeks we spent in Japan was nuts. They flew all the contestants and judges plus 80 crew members and all our cooking equipment over from Australia and put all of us up in five-star hotels. If you think about some of the locations we filmed at like the base of Mount Fuji you can begin to grasp how much money they spent — probably millions of dollars. For the humble home cook I was back then, it was a bit of a head trip. I felt like a rock star.

DOWNSIDE OF FAME

But at the same time, there’s a negative effect. Nowadays with social media, anyone can say whatever they want about your food even if they don’t come from a culinary background. Anyone can slander you. So being a celebrity chef, it’s a double-edged sword. It can work in your favour, especially if you’re young and full energy and you love what you do. But you need to have a very thick skin because people are constantly writing horrible things about you online.

BEING A RUNNER-UP

I lost by only one point to Diana Chan, but she got $250,000 in prizes and a monthly column in a food magazine, while I got only $40,000 — all of which went to paying bills that had accumulated during the 12 months I wasn’t working.

So after the show, financially, I was back at square one, but I had had this amazing experience. I think the reason I became successful is that I had no time to rest and had to figure out what I wanted to do quickly. So I opened an ice-cream parlour, I travelled around the world, worked in Michelin-starred restaurants and actively chased sponsorship deals.

The exposure I got from MasterChef was phenomenal, and I was truly blessed to be on it. But it was really just a stepping stone. Honestly, now I’m glad I didn’t win. It was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to grab the limited success I had and run with it.

Ian Lloyd Neubauer is a freelance journalist based in Indonesia. Continue the conversation @ian_neubauer