Iowa Woman Featured on MasterChef!

I'm a girl who loves a good tater tot hot dish, and I like cheese on pretty much anything, so it was fun to watch Cassie Peterson, from Clear Lake, Iowa, putting the Midwest touch on dishes in this season's 'MasterChef!' Last week, I got to talk with her after her final episode.

'MasterChef' features home cooks, people who might have had a background making food professionally, but who are not professionally trained in any way. Some of the contestants have catering businesses they run from their homes, or have worked in restaurants, but they have never gone to culinary school.

Peterson attended an open tryout in Minneapolis, where she took a dish she had prepared ahead of time. She found herself one of a couple thousand other aspirants... and then found herself on the show! "I got to L.A. and there were a bunch of other people there and we all just cooked our butts off to try to prove ourselves," Peterson said. "It was awesome. There's never been a contestant on the show from Iowa before, and I felt they were really missing a whole world of food, a whole cuisine. I decided to go on the show and show the world how awesome the food is here and how passionate people in the Midwest are about their food."

She continued, "I think they were kind of blown away at one point when we were just kind of messing around in the kitchen and the producers walked over to me going, 'Cassie, what are you doing?' I was like, 'Okay, here is a burger. Everyone can make a burger, but THIS burger has molten beer cheese all over it and it's got potato chips ground up into the patty...It's not good for you even a little bit, but it's delicious.' The producer grabbed the pan, tried a little bit, didn't give me any feedback, she just grabbed the pan and the spoon and was walking around eating beer cheese out of the pan."

"I know I didn't make it as far as I hoped I would, but in the scheme of things, I made it farther than I ever dreamed and won more than I could ever wish for," she said. Seriously, Cassie made it to the top 20 out of 30 thousand people, and got to present her dishes to Gordon Ramsay and Wolfgang Puck!  How awesome is that?!?!

'MasterChef' airs Wednesdays on Fox and 'MasterChef Junior' is currently casting for season 6!  To get more information, or to register, visit: http://www.masterchefjuniorcasting.com/