Interview with Claudia Sandoval: How to Win MasterChef 

Claudia Sandoval: I think that my inspiration comes from my grandmother and my aunties. I grew up in a family of cocineras tradicionales, which are Cooks essentially. 

They would open their home to neighbors and family members, and they would sell a plate of food to them.  

Apart from growing up in a family of cooks, my mom married my father who worked in the hospitality industry for over 17 years. He was the one who taught me about the Americanized brigade system and style of cooking.  

Claudia Sandoval: Winning a competition like MasterChef is a big deal, obviously. However, there is somebody that wins every year, so you have only one year to make it very big. 

Winning is a great platform and jumping point, but it’s all about what you make out of it. Are you able to maximize the win and capitalize on it.  

My biggest challenge since winning MasterChef has been taking it from just winning to making sure that my cookbook becomes a bestseller. 

I took a lot of the money that I won from the $250,000 prize and reinvested it into making sure that my cookbook was successful. I financed my book tour so that I could meet my fans throughout the country. 

You need to be willing to invest in yourself and what you believe in.  

Claudia Sandoval: A competition like MasterChef is all about knowing your food, knowing what you do, and owning your identity and story. At the end of the day, this is television, right? 

The producers want a story! They need to see who you are and what your thing is. Getting your 10-second elevator pitch is important.  

While I was competing, I was a single mom who lived in a one-bedroom apartment. A mom that shared a bed with her nine-year-old daughter and who was just trying to make a name for myself. I also wanted to be the first Latina to ever win MasterChef. And when you say something like that, you give them the story, you essentially sell them that story. And so, I think it’s important that people that want to go after a competition like this realize and never forget. 

You don’t need to act and try to be something that you are not. On the contrary, you almost have to be more authentically yourself. If you’re the comedian, you have to be even more funny. If you are the diva, then you just have to be the diva, and own your story. Own your identity. 

I just had to be more Latina, right? 

But that’s not the only thing. You need to practice a lot before joining the show.  

Three months after being auditioned I spent practicing and watching all of the previous seasons. I looked for:  

• What were the contestants saying?  

• How were they presenting their dishes? 

• What was successful? 

• Why were others not successful? 

If you are a good student like I was, you will pick up consistency and recognize the things that Gordon Ramsay likes and dislikes.  

And the last and probably most important piece of advice is just going in there, knowing that you know nothing. 

If you go in there with a big ego about how to cook this, and I know how to cook that. Well, guess what? You’re never going to be open to learning better techniques, better things, ingredients. There is always — especially in food, and especially with different cultures — something new to learn. 

Claudia Sandoval: When you become a celebrity it’s very human to get lost. Many people think that they want to be a celebrity until they are. People told me that I don’t have the right to complain because I chose this life. 

I hear it all the time where it’s like, “Stop complaining about your work. You chose this life, you wanted to be on television and lose your privacy.” 

A lot of celebrities, not only chefs, lose their privacy completely and therefore lose themselves. The public thinks that by choosing to be a celebrity we have no rights to any privacy or any humanity. 

I have had to file restraining orders on people. I have had people hold on to my daughter, show up to my daughter’s school. Things that are very scary. 

Young people see us on TV, and they think it’s very easy. You go to a show, talk in front of a camera, cook a little bit and voila, you magically turn into a celebrity. It takes way more than that to succeed.  

It’s a lot more than that, and I think that it’s so important that people know that. As a single mom, I had to leave my daughter for three to six months whenever we would film MasterChef Latino. That’s three to six months that I didn’t see my child. That’s three to six months that I didn’t see my family.  

People idolize the celebrity lifestyle, when they have no idea how much of a sacrifice it is. 

There are a lot more positive things. The important advice here is to find a way to balance it all.  

Claudia Sandoval: Mentorship is a complex subject, that has many important factors. I have had a lot of mentors in my life. I was part of an organization in San Diego called Mana de San Diego. The organization would connect students in high school with people in the career or field that were already established. This way we could get a direct connection to someone in that field. They would help us get the jobs and get the experience. We would some answers to the important questions.  

If you want to learn, you don’t have to find a formal mentor. Anyone that is inspiring you can be your mentor in a way. You can ask them questions, bounce ideas off them and let them show you the right way.  

The perfect example is Gordon Ramsay, right? There is enough out there to know a lot about Gordon, and how he sees life and work. Even the stuff that he posts can be a lesson to someone. If you have somebody that you really wish was your mentor, start following, paying attention and start taking lessons from what they share. I think anyone can be your mentor, right? 

Claudia Sandoval: I wish somebody would have told me to protect myself. And let me explain. It’s not like protecting myself physically because I was fortunate not to have to worry about that.  

I am a person that gives a lot and tries to help as much as possible. So, I used to promote everyone I knew. I didn’t do it expecting a lot in return, but I did expect support. The reality was a lot of those friends who got my support didn’t support me when I was in need.  

The toxic work environment is luckily behind us. There are no more Chefs that throw things at their employees, and that is a good thing. However, still be mindful when choosing the place to work at, there are a lot of egos in this industry. So, the one thing I wish I knew is how to protect myself. Remember, there is always going to be a mean person that is angry at the world or their life. Know that it’s not connected to you and it’s not about you.