MasterChef Judge Backpedals on Chicken Rendang Comments, Says it ‘Wasn’t Cooked’

After his supposed slamming of the dish he clearly knows nothing about, he went on to change his claim, saying that the meat of chicken rendang Zaleha Kadir Olpin prepared in the show was “not cooked.”

On April 4, Wallace appeared on “Good Morning Britain” along with his fellow judge in MasterChef UK, John Torode, and explained his “crispy” criticism of Olpin’s chicken rendang that she prepared during the knock out round of the BBC show’s quarter-finals, The Star reported.

“I said the skin wasn’t crispy. I didn’t mean it should be fried like a fried chicken,” Wallace said during his appearance, adding, “what I meant was that it wasn’t cooked. It simply wasn’t cooked.”

GMB’s co-host, Kate Garraway, repeated Wallace’s original “crispy” comment, but the judge clapped back. “Rest assured, the best cooks will always go through,” he said.

His fellow judge, Torode, defended their decision to not choose Olpin as one of the eight winners of the show that will advance to the next round.

“Yes, absolutely,” Torode said, adding, “and if you look at the final eight that we’ve got in there now, the food they are producing in unbelievable.”

He also went on to state that he did a “whole series in Malaysia” and that the food in the country is “fantastic.”

After hearing that, Garraway then said that the judge “should know then,” to which Torode replied: “Well, I do. I said to her, it wasn’t cooked enough.”

“She didn’t go out because the skin wasn’t crispy. She went out because the other cooks were better,” Wallace added.

Contestants who made it to the quarter-finals were asked to prepare a dish that they consider to be significant to them. Olpin had just the perfect dish in mind for the competition: nasi lemak served with chicken rendang – this particular dish was her “childhood favorite.”

Shockingly, the judges pointed out that she got her favorite childhood dish all wrong and Wallace criticized the chicken rendang, particularly the skin part.

“I like the rendang flavour, there’s a coconut sweetness. However, the chicken skin isn’t crispy. It can’t be eaten and all the sauce is on the skin so I can’t eat it,” he said.

Featured image screenshot via YouTube / The Star Online