Since winning the debut season of MasterChef Australia in 2009, Julie Goodwin has become one of the country’s most recognisable and beloved cooks.
But despite the immeasurable success the show brought her, Julie has admitted she is “petrified” to return to the kitchen on MasterChef: Foodies vs Favourites next year.
The spin-off will see 12 home cooks face off against a dozen of the most successful past contestants to ever compete in the MasterChef kitchen, including Alvin Quah, Sarah Todd, Michael Weldon and, of course, Julie.
But despite going on to write several best-selling cookbooks and establish her own hospitality company, Julie’s Place, the 51-year-old revealed she is nervous about competing on the highly-anticipated new season.
Julie won the first season of MasterChef Australia back in 2009.
(Ten)“I’m quite petrified about it,” she told Yahoo. “I watch [MasterChef] every year and I’ve just watched the standard rise and rise and the food get more and more amazing.”
“It’ll be really interesting to see if my style will cut it these days in the MasterChef kitchen.
“I’m grateful to have been given another chance to go on that trip and I’m looking forward to it. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.”
Earlier this month, Julie told TV WEEK that she hasn’t missed an episode of the cooking show over the past decade.
“I was away during much of the last season – I was on a road trip – but I watched it all when I got home. I love it. I still love learning things and I learn something new every time I watch MasterChef,” she said.
Julie, who shares adult sons Joe, Tom and Paddy, with her husband Michael, has lived through some highs and lows since winning the first season of MasterChef in 2009.
Early last year she went public with her battle with anxiety and depression explaining that it’s an “ongoing path to recovery”.
“It’s almost two years now since things really got critical, and I’m on a prescribed pathway of doing certain things,” she said.
“It’ll be really interesting to see if my style will cut it these days in the MasterChef kitchen.”
(Ten)MasterChef: Foodies vs Favourites isn’t the only show Julie will be a part of since her debut on to Aussie screens in 2009.
Julie found herself reliving some of the times in her life when money was tight in SBS’ new documentary series Could You Live On The Breadline? where the TV personality spent time with Aussies living on welfare.
“I found it very real, very confronting, actually – more than I expected,” she said.
In the series, Julie bonded with a young woman who has set up her own café, only to see her dreams devastated by the pandemic. It reminded Julie of her cooking school on the NSW Central Coast.
“We’ve managed to just hold on, so my small business is reopening and we’ve got everything crossed that the momentum we had when we shut down will come back and that we’ll be okay. But there’s no guarantees and that’s a pretty precarious place to be.”
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