The ninth edition of Ultimate Braai Master is an all-star season featuring a mix of former champions and wildcard entries.
One of the positives about Covid-19 is that it broke stereotypes about who should be in the kitchen as more men took up cooking.
“During lockdown, where people were confined to their own spaces… even those that didn’t cook originally, would’ve had to do something,” Benny Masekwameng, popularly known as Chef Benny, tells The Citizen.
Benny spoke to this publication at the launch of the ninth season of the reality cooking show Ultimate Braai Master on Friday at the e.tv studios in Hyde Park, Johannesburg.
He is one of the judges of the show alongside Chef Pete Goffe-Wood. The bulky cook says there’s a little cook inside of everyone.
“For some people it comes out more than others, but there’s definitely been a growth in the interest in people cooking and trying out things for themselves, which was influenced by cooking shows and obviously accelerated by lockdown where people had the time and they were willing to experiment.”
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The Ultimate Braai Master returns
The ninth edition of the cooking show is an all-star season that will feature eight teams, with a mix of former champions and wildcard entries.
The competition sees them embark on a gruelling road trip across Mzansi, competing in outdoor braai challenges designed to test their skill, stamina and creativity over open flames.
Because of this, Chef Benny says the quality of the food was elevated.
“Whatever we were impressed by in the previous season, with your offering, has to now improve, you can’t just go back to that… we’ve already seen that, you’ve gotta give us something special,” he says.
Chef Benny says that every season, the standard of cooking keeps going up.
“This season most definitely delivered on creative dishes and never-before-seen dishes, but a level of competition that is higher.
Chef Benny describes this current season of the Ultimate Braai Master as special because the contestants are all former champions or finalists of the show.
It was also shot in record time.
“So normally a season of Braai Master would take about eight to nine weeks to film the whole season, but this time we did it in 21 days. It was obviously short notice for both the production team and also the time that we had to shoot it in and also have it ready for launch, as our first episode airs on Sunday,” says the cook.
Reflecting on the upcoming season, Benny says he was surprised by how some of the contestants repeated mistakes they made in previous editions of the show.
“Similar mistakes within the group, especially with people that have been part of the show. Still, people get tripped up by small mistakes that they’ve done in the past… not listening to the brief properly, also looking at what is available, not taking time to plan and time their things…we always get that.”
The new season of the Ultimate Braai Master premieres on Sunday at 5pm on e.tv.
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Chef Benny’s consistent love for food
Chef Benny has been a professional chef for 21 years, working in hotels, restaurants and some private gigs.
He joined the Ultimate Braai Master in the fourth season. Before that, he was a judge on MasterChef SA for four seasons.
“In total, I have nine years of judging reality cooking shows,” he says.
However, despite becoming a celebrity in his own right now through his TV appearances, he says what has remained constant and central is food.
“The common thing is food and cooking. I’m a professional chef, professionally I’ve done it for 21 years so food is the common thread, cooking is the common thread with anything that I’ve done,” he says.
“For me it hasn’t changed, yes being on TV presents other opportunities, but in terms of the core reason and why I’m in it, is because of my profession as a chef, cooking and just creating good food. It’s definitely changed how I do things, I’m no longer in hotels and I do other things that come to the creative side of food… but it’s all about the food.”
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