MasterChef Australia fans can now taste the show from home, with two winning dishes from Aussie Classics Week landing in selected Coles stores.
Hannah Johnson’s Cheeseburger Pie and Pat McGarry’s Salted Caramel & Bickie Crumble Ice Cream were chosen as the winning dishes in a Curtis Stone Mystery Box challenge, where contestants had to create either a nostalgic pie or ice cream.
The stakes were huge: the winners scored immunity from elimination and the chance to have their dish turned into a limited-edition Coles product. No biggie!
Hannah’s family-inspired Cheeseburger Pie impressed the judges with its fun, very literal mash-up of burger flavours in pie form while Pat’s ice cream was inspired by his love of salted caramel and the caramel ANZAC slice he makes with his partner for special occasions.
The dishes were not simply copied and thrown into tubs and boxes. Hannah and Pat were involved in the product development process, heading to Coles HQ to taste different versions, give feedback and help tweak the recipes so they could be made at supermarket scale and last in freezers.
“We were definitely part of the process of that, of tasting and adjusting and doing all that,” Hannah told Chattr.
“In terms of changing ingredients. They’re producing bulk mass to Coles, so they have to do that that way. But I actually got in and actually taste test different versions. So, it was like, this is fantastic, and yeah, it was pretty amazing.”
“I think the final product, yeah, as soon as you bite into it, you’re like, this is a cheeseburger.”
Pat said the team adjusted things like salt and caramel levels. “We had a really cool experience to be able to go and do the product testing with Coles, so being made on such a large scale, obviously we had to go back and forth with different flavours, but we got it really close to what I made, and it’s pretty true to what I made in the MasterChef Kitchen,” he revealed to Chattr.
“There were different versions where they added a bit more salt here and a bit more caramel here… I’m never going to complain about eating ice cream, [but] there was definitely a lot consumed on that day.”
So how do the final results stack up? Some MasterChef fans weren’t super stoked with the finished products available at Coles, or more specifically, the price tags.
What do Hannah’s Cheeseburger Pie and Pat’s Salted Caramel & Bickie Crumble Ice Cream from Coles taste like?
The reviews are in and… they’re not all good. Firstly, some have said the ice cream isn’t heavy enough. “I picked up the tub of ice cream and it felt …. empty. Cheap ice cream that doesn’t have substance. I didn’t bother,” wrote one Reddit comment.
Another agreed that at $8-$8.50, the “ice cream is definitely expensive for how much you get, and it feels awfully light in the hand. Like you’re holding a tub of air. 473ml, odd measurement. I skipped it.”
As far as the taste of the ice cream, it was not all negative. “Was it nice? Yeah, but pretty much the same as other SC [salted caramel] ice cream on the market. Would I buy it again? No.”
But the Cheeseburger Pie at $22 copped the most flak online. “I’d rather go to the premium local butcher and get a fresh short/puff version with grass-fed beef for $8.50,” wrote one Reddit comment. Another described the pastry as “dry and crumbly”, “the filling very soggy” and the pie itself had a “strong odour of gristle”.
On the MasterChef Australia 2026 Facebook group, fans were equally shocked by the price of the Cheeseburger Pie.
“REFUSE TO PAY $22 for a ‘family’ pie that would be lucky to feed two people!!!” wrote one angry comment. “$22 for the pie is terrible,” added another.
According to another fan, the taste didn’t match the price tag. “The pie is not worth it. Hardly any flavour and so much pastry. Felt we had to at least try it but so disappointed,” another commenter wrote.
But it was not all bad reviews among fans, as one noted that their “grandson pronounced the pie delicious…. I pronounce Pat’s ice cream fabulous, could scoff it all at once.”
MasterChef Australia airs Sunday 7pm and Monday and Tuesday at 7.30pm on Channel 10 and 10Play.
Want to CHATTR with us? Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok for more entertainment news.
