Grace Dent grew up with MasterChef. She and her dad would watch it together at home in Carlisle. “We used to laugh our heads off at the critics,” she says. “Just utterly ridiculous people, with their overblown egos, thinking their opinions on food matter. Who are these people? And then lo and behold …” She smiles. Dent, who is also the Guardian’s restaurant critic, is the show’s new co-host with the Irish chef Anna Haugh; both have been guest judges across various MasterChef series for several years. Watching the programme as a child did alter the course of Dent’s life. “There was also a little thing in my head, thinking that looks like an amazing job. You get to go to restaurants and talk about it?”

The two hosts knew of each other, says Dent, sitting next to Haugh, “because the restaurant and hospitality world, especially in London, is minuscule”. But in working alongside each other, “our relationship definitely took a much closer turn because we were together,” Haugh steps in, “all the time. Finishing each other’s sentences.” Dent hadn’t reviewed Haugh’s London restaurant Myrtle. “And I wouldn’t review it now. For a start, it would be quite difficult to sneak in. I might arrive in a wig and glasses.” Haugh laughs. “I would love that. If you come, you have to wear a wig and glasses.”

After a day’s filming and tasting plates of food, concocted with varying skill levels, they WhatsApp each other back at their respective flats to see what’s for dinner. “We always plan that we’ll eat something proper,” says Dent. “But what actually happens is Anna sits in her pyjamas and eats a giant burrata. I was going to cook something, but what I’ve actually had is seven olives, a tablespoon of peanut butter and some Weetabix. I stand like a Tyrannosaurus rex with my false eyelashes going at different angles, and I just eat out the fridge.”

They make a wonderful pair – Dent, funny and warm, and as glamorous as a trifle; Haugh, pristine in her chef’s whites and demanding of excellence. “I think people expect Grace to be strict and intimidating, and me to be soft and cuddly,” says Haugh. The first episode, in which one contestant adds flour to his hollandaise, shows that to be a mistake. “I am not looking forward to tasting that,” Haugh says, witheringly.

MasterChef is a TV institution, first broadcast in 1990. In recent times, it has curdled amid allegations involving its long-time presenters. First, Gregg Wallace left in 2024, and a later independent report substantiated 45 allegations against him, including inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact. Dent replaced Wallace for a series of Celebrity MasterChef opposite John Torode, but then Torode was let go after the same investigation substantiated an allegation he had used racist language.

Did Dent and Haugh feel pressure to save the show? “No,” says Haugh instantly. “The team that work behind the show are absolutely superb. Grace and I are on camera, but there is a whole brigade of people lifting us up, taking care of us, encouraging us to be the best version of ourselves. Nobody wanted us to be anything but authentic and focusing on the different … I want to say customers. What do we call them?” “Contestants,” says Dent. It felt like a “real team effort,” adds Haugh. “It didn’t feel that we were being thrown into the wilderness.”

Both are reluctant to pick over the bones of the MasterChef chaos, but it has been an extraordinary and difficult time for the show. Last year’s amateur series, already filmed with Wallace and Torode, was still screened with as little of the sacked hosts shown as possible. Some contestants asked to be edited out, not wanting to be associated with the series, and many people, including those who had made allegations against Wallace, questioned why it was being shown at all. Even the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, weighed in, saying she wouldn’t be watching.

“All I can think about is the future,” says Dent. “I can’t look back. I haven’t got time. It might seem like I’m just pointing at scallops [but] it’s full-on and difficult, and I’m working with an enormous team. So no, I don’t think about the past.”

In a world where weird 45-second TikTok recipes get outsize attention, MasterChef celebrates culinary ambition. “It is about using good ingredients and turning it into something spectacular,” says Haugh. “Some of the stuff you see on social media, it breaks my heart as a chef, where I’m like: that’s not true, that can’t be done.” Dent says her feelings on social media recipes “have become much more nuanced recently. On one level, I’m absolutely aware that a lot of those recipes don’t work, because I’ve been foolish enough to try them. Like, this cake only takes two and a half minutes, it only needs bicarbonate of soda, a frying pan and an egg.” She laughs. “But I also know that we have millions of kids [who] won’t pick up a recipe book. What they are learning from TikTok is, like, what beef bourguignon is, what confit potatoes are, and it’s given them that impetus to go, I’m going to try it.”

It might be a reality show, but the contestants are far from your usual reality TV stars. Not one, says Dent, “just wanted to be on television. We focus on the personality, but we also focus very much on their food.” Often, the dream is to open a restaurant – as many winners have gone on to do. “MasterChef opens that door,” says Haugh. “Tons of people, whether they win the show or not, enter into hospitality because they entered MasterChef. Our industry really needs that. It’s not just about cooks. It’s about front-of-house, it’s about food writers. There’s a whole wealth of opportunities.”

This hasn’t always been the case for either in their careers. Both are from working-class families who have succeeded in male-dominated (and in the case of journalism, middle-class dominated) fields. “There were definitely points where my accent probably didn’t help me,” says Dent. “I think there’s points where I thought that if I was better and sleeker and posher, then everything might be a bit easier, but no, I’m glad I’m still quite rough around the edges. In the loveliest way.” For Haugh, “when you’re working in an environment that’s highly stressful, you have to just fall into line. I worked in some kitchens where it was very much that I couldn’t really be myself, because [I can be] outspoken, I’m intimidating at times, and quirky, and that would confuse people. But the truth is, I was there to learn, I was there to work.”

One of Dent’s earliest jobs was as a TV writer for the Guardian’s much-loved Guide before she moved into food writing and broadcasting. Early in Haugh’s career, she worked in Paris for influential chef Gualtiero Marchesi, and was head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s London House before opening her own restaurant. What have they learned about success? “Tenacity, hard work,” says Dent. “Talent is one thing, then sometimes it’s just keeping on standing up every time something goes wrong, something bad happens.” She smiles. “You can’t really put a price on just never going away.” Haugh’s drive comes from being excited about her job and wanting to continuously improve. “We speak about success wrongly. We see success as somebody else telling us we are good. But I believe Grace and I, the similar thing we have is we know what we want. Success is authenticity. It’s being able to pay your bills, [but] it’s not about somebody else telling you that you’re great. You have to be able to acknowledge it yourself.”

In her own restaurant, says Haugh, “I run a kitchen that celebrates people in every shape and form. I believe in the deliciousness of differences, that is where I think magic lies. It’s so different to some of the kitchens I trained in.” In the past, Haugh has told of being shouted at, deliberately burned, and of witnessing abuse in kitchens. “It’s unacceptable,” she says. Kitchens can be pressurised, but there are surgeons performing life-saving operations every day. “I mean, that’s stress – not making somebody’s dinner. ‘Oh, the stress!’ I’ve no time for that. The worst thing that can happen in my restaurant is that the food might go out five minutes later than I wanted. That’s it.”

Stress is something the MasterChef contestants have to deal with. In the first few episodes, various iterations of mashed potato seem to be the source of many problems. Why is it so hard? “In theory, it should be easy,” says Haugh. “But it’s the details that turn something OK into something delicious – control of temperature, salt, fat and liquid. When you chuck in a big load of stress and a film crew and two lunatics running around, all of a sudden the simplicity becomes very stressful, and there’s nowhere to hide once the mash is made. The silly things we do when we’re nervous, that’s just the human condition, isn’t it?”

Dent smiles. “I don’t belittle what we’re doing, but I do kind of say to them: ‘Look, it’s going to be OK. Have you cooked this before?’ And they say: ‘Yes, 17 times.’ ‘OK, you can do this.’ I don’t want anybody to have a bad time on the show.”

MasterChef starts Tuesday 21 April on BBC One at 9pm.