'MasterChef''s Ryan Walker on What Led to His Downfall in the Field Team Challenge
It’s bad enough on MasterChef when one of the challenges isn’t something in your area of expertise and you mess up and lose your apron. But going home on a team challenge has to feel even worse, because everything that happens to make the team lose isn’t necessarily in your control.
That’s what happened to 33-year-old Ryan Walker from Millstone Township, N.J., on tonight’s episode when his team lost the field challenge, which was grilling a delicious meal for 101 firefighters and emergency personnel in Ventura County, Calif.
“I was very disappointed,” Ryan tells Parade. “I did a lot of preparation going out [to California] to compete; I put myself outside my comfort zone. I learned a lot of new skills and the biggest thing is I didn’t get to really display them in the competition to be out so early, so I was very disappointed.”
The problems started for the blue team when it decided to serve pork chops as their entre, and it turned out that the chops weren’t the typical regular, thin-sliced pork chops you typically see.
“They were very thick, double bone-in, extremely cold,” Ryan explains. “They were in a very cold fridge with limited time to temper, so it was probably one of the more difficult meats we could have cooked. And then on top of that, our team majority ruled, and we opted away from the heavier barbeque sauce that James actually suggested, and I was behind. That was another thing that made it even more difficult.”
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Another difficulty that Ryan ran into was the equipment. He had to cook on an Argentinean grill, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but the weather wasn’t on his side.
“I’m very comfortable grilling, I’m very comfortable open fire, I’ve done that,” Ryan says. “It’s not my main way of cooking but I’ve done a lot of it. I think I was one of the stronger grillers there, but that was definitely a larger setup than I was used to. And on top of that, with an Argentinean, using that in a windy condition is extremely difficult, especially when you have a pork chop that you’re trying to cook through. So, with a thick piece of meat like that, you really have to have that temperature steady, and with a grill like that, it’s very vulnerable to the windy conditions."
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To make matters worse, Ryan says there was some miscommunications on the team – and this was a big one when it came to him getting sent home.
“I looked over to my captain at one point and I said, ‘Do not send this out. It’s raw.’ And it got sent out anyway, and then that’s on me because I’m on the grill. A lot of stuff happened there; it is what it is.”
During our chat, Ryan also discussed what got him into cooking in the first place, making his dad proud, and what’s next for him. Read on for more.
The challenge was a team challenge, and you were cooking for 100 people. Have you ever cooked for such a large group of people before?
Not 100, but I’ve done 30-40 with just me and my mom. But no, never for 100 people. But I did have a team of eight, so that was a little bit of a help there. I did have an extremely difficult job on that team. That was definitely one of the larger parties that I’ve ever cooked for.
And Gordon Ramsay talked about how many probes you used. He seemed to think you should be able to tell if the chops were done or not by touch.
Yeah, he’s crazy. Gordon was looking for some TV points to go negative on me there. You can probe a piece of meat without drying it out, that’s for sure. Typically, when I’m cooking at home, I’m not probing every piece of meat, but I was very worried about how thick the chops were and then putting them on the grill without being properly tempered, so my defense against that was to probe them and check.
You’re relatively new to cooking, having embraced a healthy lifestyle after recovering from addiction. How did you decide to get into cooking? And did you take classes, watch videos, or TV shows?
When I first got clean and started getting healthy, I wanted to lose some weight, so I started a keto diet. But at that same time when I got clean, I also fell in love with food, and keto is very restrictive when it comes to ordering food out, or getting your typical meals, or takeout, or something like that. But if you cook it yourself, you can swap a few ingredients and make some adjustments and still enjoy a wide variety of foods. So, that’s why I started cooking, that’s why I started getting into it, and then it just blossomed from there.
What made you decide that you had what it took to audition, especially being relatively new to cooking?
I love all the cast members, but there were probably two of them that I thought could beat me in a finale. That’s why I was so upset about going home and not being able to display all the skills I developed. I think I’m head and shoulders better than the rest of the home cooks in America, I really am very confident in my skills.
The way I started cooking, I was looking at a lot of videos and finding different cultural techniques around the world. So, that’s how I built my skill set and I would put it up against anybody. I told them when I left there that they lucked out, because I really believe they did, because I would have been a force to keep going in that competition.
So much of it is luck of the draw with what the competitions are. How far you go isn’t necessarily a matter of how talented you are.
Yeah, and I had a lot of dishes that I could plug and play and use in many different types of challenges. I studied the show, I was very meticulous about the mystery boxes, I cooked alongside for the side-by-side cooks, I did mine at home. So, I had a very set plan to lay low until the Top 10 and then go from there with some different skills, but the team challenge right in the beginning messed up my whole plan there.
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When you auditioned, one of the nicest parts of watching that was seeing the relationship between you and your dad. I’m sure he’s still proud of you even if you came home third.
Oh, he’s extremely proud and I love MasterChef. To be able to give that moment to my dad, to be able to cook steak and eggs on national TV for some of the best chefs in the world, to present my dish to Gordon Ramsay and my dad to be there to see it, it just meant the world to me. I would have loved to keep going in the competition, but the universe gives you what you need, not what you want, so I’ll have to settle with what I got there.
You cooked steak and eggs for your audition. That was a risky dish to make, wasn’t it, something that sounds so simple?
It was, but I was so confident in that dish. Every other audition dish I could think of is typically somewhat of your own play on a meal, but I really did my own play on steak and eggs. That’s an egg technique that Gordon Ramsay himself had never seen before. It’s something I developed myself. So, I was extremely confident with that dish. I think Aarón [Sanchez] was just busting my chops there, not giving me the yes. I’ll put that dish up against any.
So, what’s next for you? Back to construction or will you continue pursuing culinary dreams?
I’m going culinary all the way. I started building an outdoor kitchen before I left for MasterChef, so when I got back, I didn’t go back to construction, I kept doing my own construction on this kitchen that I’m sitting in right now. I’ll be hosting a tasting menu for the rest of the summer. I have an outdoor seating area, I have enough plates to fill a restaurant, so, it’s going to be a very small, exclusive thing that I’m doing, and I have some investors coming to that as well. I want to open a farm-to-table restaurant here in New Jersey.
In the meantime, I’ve just been cooking away on social media, working with some different companies. My Instagram account’s cooking_it_keto, but don’t worry, I also do my own homemade pastas, and I make the best cheesecakes you ever had. So, I’m definitely working on my skills all around, not just steak and eggs. But yeah, the farm-to-table restaurant’s my dream, I feel like it’s my purpose. It’s going to happen one way or the other and this little tasting menu I’m running this summer is one step in that direction.
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Do you have a name for your restaurant yet?
The Steak and The Egg.
That’s perfect considering that was your winning dish.
Yeah, and I’ve created hundreds of steak and egg recipes and many of them will be tasted at my establishment soon to come.
New Jersey gets a bad rap from New York, but it’s actually called the Garden State and it does have a lot of agriculture and fresh ingredients, right?
If you saw where I was sitting right now, you wouldn’t believe it. I have a huge garden to my right; I’ve got the chicken coop behind me. I’m surrounded by two pit bulls, a German shepherd, about 10,000 flowers, so it’s a lovely state. I love it. The north part of it right by the Meadowlands, Giants stadium, Jets stadium, that’s where most people are, that’s an industrial wasteland so that’s not reflective of the rest of the state by any means.
You mentioned there were some other home cooks that impressed you. Can you name names?
Yeah, I can name names. I’ll give you four. Not before the show started, but once we started rolling those first couple episodes, I did see my teammate Nina as a possible threat. I was very impressed with Wayne’s food knowledge and his attention to detail. Grant extremely impressed me making pasta right out the gate. I wish I did it just because I didn’t get a chance to make my pasta. I think I make better pasta than Grant by the way, but still it impressed me that he did that. Anybody that comes in and does pasta for their audition dish is a force to be reckoned with. And then Kennedy, Kennedy had some knowledge, had some skills, and had some technique and some flair that I thought could give me a run for my money. The whole cast is great cooks, but those four, in particular, I thought I had to keep my eye on.
MasterChef airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on FOX.