UK MasterChef criticised for eliminating Malaysian contestant who cooked national chicken dish to perfection

'When Malaysian food gets insulted, an entire nation stands up'

MasterChef is being blasted for eliminating a Malaysian-born woman who faced criticism for a beloved national dish she made to perfection.

The BBC reality competition's judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode criticised contestant Zaleha Kadir Olpin's chicken redang stating the skin needed to be more crispy.

“I like the rendang flavour, there's a coconut sweetness,” Wallace said, adding: “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.”

Torode called her redang “a mistake” and Zaleha later left the show.

Malaysian viewers, including food writer Jahabar Sadiq, were not impressed highlighting on social media that the judging panel's views on how best to cook the dish - served as an accompaniment to nasi lemak - were incorrect.

Sadiq said that Wallace's calls to make the skin “crispy” rather than “soft and tender” were ignorant, while Facebook user Sujita Soorian hit out at the judges for “only know[ing] about food from their own culture.”

She added: “Crispy chicken rendang? Did the judges think that this was fish and chips? Such limited knowledge of cuisine from around the world. Shame on them really.”

Sadiq told BBC News: “They clearly weren't familiar with food from other parts of the world because if they were, they would have had the knowledge to know what real nasi lemak is. Crispy chicken? No. The meat has to be soft and that's a result of hours of cooking.

“Many people associate chicken with being fried but there is no craft, no skill. But this is chicken rendang, not KFC so it all boils down to how the chef controls the spices and the flames.”

In recent weeks, Zaleha - based in Bristol - had impressed both Wallace and Torode with a variety of South East Asian dishes. She branded nasi lemak a “childhood favourite,” recalling how she used to save up her pocket money to buy it from a stall outside her school when she was younger.

She later expressed her disappointment, saying: “I have worked a lot and I thought they would like it," but in an Instagram post, assured viewers she stands by her "traditional" recipe for the dish.

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