Since being eliminated from MasterChef Australia 2021, Aaron Sanders has wasted no time in getting to work on his goals.
The 34-year-old insurance manager from South Australia told POPSUGAR Australia that he has launched his own business called Heaps Local, which aims to promote “everything South Australia, working with local producers to talk about their story, why they do what they do and how they do it.”
While Sanders has some regrets about his final cook in the MasterChef competiton (“I definitely wish I had cooked the lamb,” he said) he has nothing but love for his time on the show and the friends he made along the way.
“It’s definitely a family,” he said. “We spent all of our time together and it is an absolute bubble — we’re cramming five years of friendship into a couple months.
“It all happened so quickly, but I think some of my fondest moments were downtimes when we were just practising and having fun together, playing music and just chilling out. We shared a lot of our own real stories in those times, and you just feel that connection.”
While Sanders has deep affection for each of his fellow cooks, there was one in particular that inspired him the most.
“Pete and I had a lot of really great discussions and we cook similar food,” Sanders said, citing that Heston Blumenthal is also a huge inspiration to then both. “We were very much into that modern place and style of food, so we had a lot of really good discussions around dishes that we love ideas that we had.”
For viewers, it may seem like the state-of-the-art MasterChef kitchen would surely be intimidating to cook in, but Sanders confesses that actually couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It definitely becomes less intimidating,” he explained. “It starts to become a bit of a safety net. Anytime we cooked offsite we felt really out of place.
“So when you were back in that MasterChef kitchen, you know, a lot of us spent a lot of time memorising where everything was because when you’re under time pressure, you don’t want to be wasting time while you’re running around the pantry…that kitchen definitely became home after only a couple of weeks.”
Offering advice for those who are hoping to experience the MasterChef pantry for themselves in 2022, Sanders offered this advice: “If you are even slightly thinking about it, I hope that you put your hand up, be yourself and just show how much you love food.
“It is the best experience in the world, and you’ll certainly not regret it.”
