Celebrity MasterChef judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode didn’t hold back when it came to The Traitors star Diane Carson’s cooking – taking specific aim at the way she carved her poussin.

Tonight, Carson, pop star Mutya Buena, professional dancer and choreographer Vito Coppola, TV personality Diane Carson, BBC Radio 2 presenter OJ Borg and make-up artist and TV judge Dominic Skinner entered the MasterChef kitchen.

As usual, the celebrities were thrown into the deep end as they took on the Under the Cloche challenge, where each star picked a mystery ingredient which was the focus of their dish.

During the challenge, Carson was given a poussin to use and was off to a rocky start when she admitted to Wallace and Torode she didn’t know what it was.

After getting started, she decided to roast the poussin, stuffed with shallots, crispy honey and chilli kale, chips and chicken jus, with Wallace intrigued about her previous cooking skills.

He asked: “Diane look, we loved you on The Traitors, so you can work things out really quickly. Can you apply that same sort of logic to MasterChef and the cookery?” to which she replied: “I’m hoping too yeah. [I’m] chaotic.”

Diane Carson admitted that she doesn’t normally carve meat when she is at home

Wallace noted on the sidelines: “Diane got the Poussin, she is roasting the chicken whole, Diane’s got to make sure that the chicken is seasoned really, really well.

“Hopefully the skin on the outside will be nice and crispy. But it’s going to be cutting it and presenting it, how will she do that? Whatever she does, it needs to look pretty.”

As their cooking time drew to a close, Carson had to carve her poussin to be able to present it to the judges and said to the camera: “Do you know what, I’d like to point out I never carve meat. My husband does it. As you can see.”

The carving of her meat was the first thing Wallace and Torode noticed about her dish, with the latter teasing: “I seem to have a breast and a leg, Gregg seems to be missing an appendage.”

She made the judges a roasted poussin, stuffed with shallots with crispy honey and chilli kale, chips and chicken jus

She admitted once again: “Yeah I mean, to be fair, I don’t do the carving at home, so I sort of muddled my way through carving the chicken for you.”

Away from the presentation of the dish, Wallace revealed: “Your chicken is glorious. It’s really soft and moist. It looks like it’s been hacked away from the bone, but it tastes fantastic.”

However, Tororde was less impressed and critiqued: “Your chips, they’re a bit soggy, they haven’t quite worked out. The sauce could be thicker, but it’s got the lovely chicken flavour.

“The kale itself, with a little bit of spice coming through it, and then the sweetness of honey, that’s fab. I’m impressed with your pallet Diane, your carving is atrocious.”

Gregg Wallace and John Torode were left unimpressed with Diane Carson’s carving skills

BBC

Touching on her first round, Carson explained: “I knew the carving was going to be a problem, and I worried about it from probably the beginning. It was a bit of a hash but it tasted ok!”

Before taking on the challenge, Carson admitted she felt like she had a lot to prove after her son Ross slammed her Sunday roasts during their time in the BBC series, The Traitors.

She said: “The thing of course, don’t forget, that I have something to prove because, during my time in The Traitors, my son told the world my Sunday roasts were awful.

“And my Sunday roasts aren’t awful, they’re not amazing – but they’re not awful, so I sort of want to vindicate myself in some way!”