Plot

In the next mystery box challenge, the Top Five home cooks must create a dish using pear, blue cheese, tomato, portabella mushroom and chocolate. The winner of the challenge receives two advantages: first, he/she will be safe from elimination; then the challenge winner will choose which of four different baskets filled with ingredients - put together on his/her own and with three former MASTERCHEF winners - the remaining contestants must cook with. Find out who will be one step closer to joining the champions and who will be eliminated.

Mystery Box Challenge: The contestants will have to impress the judges with a single ingredient they selected at random, with only a standard staple pantry box to their aid. The top three dishes were Stephen's, Derrick's, and Claudia's. Claudia was the winner of the Mystery Box. Challenge Winner/Immune: Claudia Sandoval. Elimination Challenge: Claudia would be safe from elimination. Claudia was allowed to select 20 of her favorite ingredients that she could see being included in her cookbook and placed them inside a basket, to which she would then select one of the remaining four home cooks to use in the upcoming elimination challenge. The remaining three baskets of ingredients were hand-picked by three past MasterChef champions: Christine Ha (season 3), Luca Manfé (season 4) and Courtney Lapresi (season 5). Claudia was allowed to select a basket for each of the remaining four contestants to cook. She gave her Mexican basket to Nick, Christine's Southeast Asian basket to Stephen, Luca's Italian basket to Katrina, and Courtney's baking basket to Derrick. Nick had the best dish of the night and Stephen also did good enough to be sent to safety leaving Derrick and Katrina to face elimination. Winner: Nick Nappi. Bottom two: Derrick Peltz and Katrina Kozar. The judges eliminated Katrina. Eliminated: Katrina Kozar.