Sue, Darrsh, Alex, Gill and Lachlan entered the kitchen to a familiar set-up, having seen the cook-along challenge with Jamie Oliver earlier in the season. The five chefs knew what was in store for them, and Curtis Stone was not going to let them off the hook.

Speaking to 10 Play, Sue admitted that seeing the benches arranged for a cook-along challenge made her confident she would be safe from elimination.

“I thought, I can do this! It’s just a matter of watching and doing, and I can do that,” Sue said. “I saw Jamie Oliver’s cook-off and that looked challenging but, watching from the gantry, I wished I was cooking.

“When I walked in I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this! This is my kind of challenge, better than a pressure test.’ How wrong was I?”

Almost from the get-go, Sue said she got off on the wrong foot, adding that the challenge was a lot more difficult than she had expected.

“It was quite traumatising, it wasn’t the fun cook I thought it would be,” she admitted with a laugh. “I got off on the wrong foot to begin with… it was not an enjoyable cook for me whatsoever. It was great to cook along with Curtis Stone as an experience, but it wasn’t the pleasurable experience I would have dreamt of.

“Curtis was seriously on a mission to test us and it was super, super fast,” she continued. Having watched the Jamie Oliver challenge, Sue said she watched as he would pause, walk around and look at what the chefs were doing. “There was a bit of breathing room to catch up, but not this. This was full-on, an overload for the sense and I feel as though I got lost pretty early.

“But I worked through, I thought I could do this. I gained some momentum,” she said, adding, “it’s hard to catch up when somebody doesn’t take a breath. It was like treading water.”

Falling behind with one of the first elements, Sue powered along and multitasked, making up ground. But in the flurry of activity she briefly took her eyes off her creamed cabbage and shallots, causing it to burn. In a panic, she took her potatoes out too early, risking them to be undercooked. 

But when the timer ran out, Sue managed to get all her elements on the plate. “I felt as though I had done enough, all I had to do was not be the worst dish of the day,” she said. “I felt that was achievable… and was pretty chuffed I managed to get every element on the plate.

“I felt better at the end than I did in the first five minutes. I survived!” 

But the issues in the dish were too much, and sadly the judges told Sue that her time in the MasterChef kitchen had come to an end, which admittedly shocked her.

“I was a little bit numb,” she added. “As other contestants have left, I’ve been gutted. It’s very emotional and the emotions are real!

“I felt as though I had given it my all, if I hadn’t given it all I had in the tank and not plated up a dish or something, I would have been more upset but I felt as though I gave it all I could and so, for that, I had to stand proud and hold my head up high.

“As sad as it was, and even now it makes me feel very sad because I felt like I could have gone further, you have to just accept it. It’s a competition and I’ve come out better for it than I went in. There’s nothing lost.”

During her time in the competition, Sue spoke about coming into Masterchef as something purely for herself. “I’ve suppressed a lot of my dreams and I think it just allowed me to be a wee bit selfish, and I haven’t allowed myself to do that.

“I’ve kind of taken back into control what I really want to do, and it’s taken this competition to show me that I can do that, get off that treadmill of life and working, and going after something you really want and love,” Sue said.

“I feel like getting on a podium and screaming out to people that - it doesn’t have to be MasterChef, just something they really love, but they're in the grind of everyday life. I feel like saying to those people, stop and think. What’s the worst that could happen if you give something a go that you really believe in and are passionate about?

“I left it so long, but it's never too late,” she continued. “That’s the other thing, it’s never too late… I just feel like I’ve done the right thing, there’s something in it that I want to preach to everybody. There’s something in doing things like this that pays off.”

Coming into the competition, Sue only had two main goals for herself. The first was simply to participate, to immerse herself fully in something she always felt like she could do well in. As she continued through the competition, she saw her courage growing.

With every stumble or every triumph, Sue could see herself getting to the end of the competition and holding the trophy up high. “It made me feel as though I could achieve anything,” she explained. “The further into it you get, the more you believe in yourself. I can, I can do this! The dream was real, absolutely.”

Her second goal started during COVID when she was going through a handwritten recipe book she has kept for years. “I started writing it when I was about 15 or 16, it’s falling to pieces and really ugly,” she joked. During the pandemic, Sue told her kids she wanted to digitise the recipes, add photos and turn them into a coffee table book.

Now, looking through the decades of recipes she has collected and perfected over the years, Sue wants to turn it into a recipe book for anyone to use.

“My dream is to publish that and share it with more people because it goes retro to modern, and everything in between. It was a small dream to get it published, and I’ll probably do it myself at some point, it’s as simple as that.”

But since leaving the MasterChef kitchen, Sue's passion for food has only grown and now she’s setting up her own bespoke dining experiences. “It’s called Sue Chef -a bit of a play on words - and I’ll develop it into a whole lot of stuff... but the initial phase is going to be dining, making food and cooking for people in their homes," she explained.

“I’ve already got quite a few bookings but I’m setting up my website and that’ll be ready to go by the end of the week. I'm really, really thrilled. I’ve got my first event on the weekend. It’ll just grow and develop from there. I’ll take one step at a time and let it evolve organically.”

MasterChef Australia continues Sunday - Thursday at 7.30 on 10 and 10 Play