Eddie Scott, the winner of MasterChef 2022, has said that his job as a marine pilot prepared him for the heat of the kitchen including when he faced Gordon Ramsay, a notoriously fierce chef.
On Thursday, the 31-year-old amateur chef won BBC’s cooking competition and he faced tough competition in the final from fellow contestants Pookie Tredell and Radha Kaushal-Bolland as they all battled it out to impress judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace.
Scott, who lives in Beverley, East Yorkshire, spent eight years as a navigation officer in the Merchant Navy travelling the world and has piloted ships on the Humber in northern England for the last five years.
He told the PA news agency: “The stakes are quite high at my work. If you have an accident, the ship catches fire, you have a collision or you hit something, you can cause huge amounts of damage to the environment and to the ship and other infrastructure.
“So, it’s a job where you have to conduct yourself at the highest standards and a huge amount of pressure, navigating and manoeuvring the ships, which is a tough job.
“That allows me to think with a cool head in high-pressure environments and that really helps me to keep a clear mind in the kitchen and during the challenges on MasterChef.”
The marine pilot said that being a “very organised person” has helped him handle the stress of his job and the kitchen as he is able to methodically plan out the recipe in his mind.
Being able to thrive under pressure came in particularly handy when cooking with Ramsay, one of his culinary heroes.
The celebrity chef hosted this year’s Chef’s Table at his three Michelin-starred establishment – Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
Scott told PA that he “wasn’t nervous in the slightest” when he had to cook some of Ramsay’s classic dishes to impress a dining room of some of the country’s best chefs.
He said: “I was more about seizing the opportunity of cooking with one of my heroes, someone I really admire.
“There were not many nerves, you could feel the pressure, but I was really excited.”
The amateur chef said he tries to maintain his “up for anything” attitude when cooking as he feels “if you cook with a smile, then you’ll make lovely food”.
His positive attitude helped him through the competition, which saw 44 other amateur cooks fight for the title across seven weeks of culinary challenges.
After being crowned, Scott said he felt “on top of the world” and that winning the prestigious cookery competition was “an absolute dream come true”.
He hopes his MasterChef title will aid that ambition, explaining: “I’d really love to open a restaurant and showcase my love of food, my passion with other people and my nostalgia which shines through all my dishes.”
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