“I’m Super Excited!”: MasterChef’s Katrina Dunnett Lands a Dream Job After Her Elimination

Katrina Dunnett became the third person eliminated from MasterChef Australia 2021 after being out-breaded by her competition.

During a challenge set by superstar chef Massimo Bottura where bread was to be the featured ingredient, Katrina’s bread and butter pudding with an orange twist tasted beautifully of orange, however, fell short when it came to the breaded aspect.

“It’s so hard, honestly,” Katrina told POPSUGAR Australia during an interview after her elimination. “You’ve really got to be able to think on your feet with the time constraints and the pressure, and you’ve got to be able to make sure that you’re meeting the brief.

“It’s all got to do as well with what everyone else cooked on the day. That first round when it was the mac and cheese, I tried to be a little bit more creative with what I was doing and unfortunately that didn’t work.”

She continued: “Then, in the second round, I thought, I’ll try and bring it back to basics and do something a bit more traditional like the bread and butter pudding, and unfortunately that didn’t go so well.

Katrina’s love of cooking stems from her maternal Oma (grandmother), her grandfather’s second wife, who was Indonesian. As a result, the culture and cuisine are inherently entrenched in her cooking style.

“I have a lot of family in Indonesia,” she said. “It’s quite an incredible family story to have all of those connections. I’ve become more aware as I’ve gotten older that being able to travel to Indonesia where my family comes from is a privilege and so is how we eat the way we do.

“To see people have so little and how food means so much to them, it really does connect people in terms of family.”

Katrina’s Oma also taught her a very handy kitchen tip, which she uses in all her cooking. “Add the salt right at the end,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easy to just throw it in as your cooking, but I think it hinders cooking time. Particularly if you’re cooking rice or meat, it influences the way you’re cooking. So throw it in at the end, because it leaves everything the way it was.”

During her time in the MasterChef kitchen, the 25-year-old marketing coordinator learned more than just some additional (and incredible) cooking skills.

“I really wasn’t sure how a television show worked,” she admitted. “There are a lot of long days and you’re, of course, doing the interviews [to camera] that afternoon. There’s just a lot that goes into it.”

As for what is next for the young MasterChef contestant? She has just landed a job with Food Share – an organisation that maximises the volume and nutritional quality of food for local people in need.

“The goal when I went onto the show was to enter the food and education space and grow awareness around access and availability of food,” she said.

“I have a job with Food Share Australia and they grow and rescue food and then repurpose it for vulnerable communities. I’m super excited!”

MasterChef Australia continues Sunday – Wednesday at 7.30pm on Network Ten.