40 Rules You Didn't Know 'MasterChef' Contestants Have To Follow

All applicants must be 18 or older. If you don't meet the age requirement, you can always apply for MasterChef Junior.

Since its conception, MasterChef has inspired franchises all around the world. However, to compete on the U.S. version of the show, you must be a legal citizen or permanent resident of the United States.

Sorry, if you're a professional chef or your income comes from cooking or preparing food, you're not allowed to compete.

Aside from some pre-registration online, it's relatively easy to attend an open casting call for MasterChef. You just have to prepare your best dish and bring it in to be sampled by a panel of expert chefs. Piece of cake.

Gordon Ramsay doesn't attend the open calls, but the panel of judges includes people who could give him a run for his money. "The chefs were tasting food and also critiquing, so people were getting critiqued on the spot which was not something I had expected. Then, on top of that, you're also talking to producers who wanna know what your personality is like," former contestant Elise Mayfield told AV Club.

Making sure your dish is the proper temperature before it's served is up to you. Mayfield told AV Club her trick: "So I came in with two insulated lunch bags. One of them was an aluminum foil takeout container and I had a sock—a clean sock!—full of rice that I had heated up in the microwave, along with these glove warmer things so I had that and a heated bag of rice in the insulated lunch bag."

After your audition, the casting department and producers can take a long time to make their final decisions on the cast. According to Mayfield from season five, it took four months before she got a final decision from production.

Filming for MasterChef takes place in Los Angeles. If you make it to the competition round of the show, that means packing up your knives and heading out west.

Although casting takes months, once you hear back from production, you don’t have a lot of time to get to LA. One season five competitor had just 10 days to pack for Los Angeles after learning she made it on the show.

About 100 applicants make the journey out to Los Angeles and are put up in a hotel by production. After they arrive, there's one more round of auditions and 70 people are sent home. "I was basically told, 'This is not a guarantee that you're on the show, this is not a guarantee you're going to meet the judges, this is a not guarantee of anything. It's just the final audition,'" Mayfield once said.

During the last round of auditions, each prospective contestant has to meet with production's psychologist for a formal evaluation. According to former contestant Jessie Glenn, you are never showed the results, so it's unclear what they are looking for in the evaluation.

Contestants are also required to meet with a private investigator who will perform a background check on you. The investigative meeting felt "invasive," one former contestant said.

When contestants journey to Los Angeles, they have to plan as if they will be gone for the entirety of filming. Producers tell them to pack as if they’ll be gone for a few months and most quit their jobs for the show, while some are lucky enough to just take a leave of absence. "For me, I was really lucky because I was able to keep my job," Mayfield said: "A lot of people really quit their jobs to go to that show,"

Most of the show’s behind-the-scenes secrets will remain secret, as the contestants are required to sign NDAs before officially joining the show. However, there's one contestant who didn't sign the show's tightly bound contract: season three's Jessie Glenn. According to Healthline, Glenn began asking questions when she received the contract and the show didn’t notice she hadn’t signed it until after she was eliminated.

Contestants on the show are put up in a hotel for the duration of filming. Additionally, their transportation and food expenses are paid for by the show.

It's not much, but in 2013 it was reported that MasterChef contestants were paid a weekly allowance of $630.

From the first day of filming, the wardrobe department has a specific outfit picked out for each contestant. Mayfield explained that you are told what to wear in the kitchen.

To make sure each contestant is camera-ready, production takes care of hair and makeup. "To hear, 'OK, we're going to hair and makeup,' and then to actually pull into Paramount Pictures, that moment was nuts. That's the moment when it's like, 'Oh, this is really happening. This is happening right now,'" Mayfield said of the moment the experience really hit her.

The first day of filming can be a bit overwhelming, because that's when contestants are taken to the kitchen set for the first time and meet the judges. Mayfield said: "And then Gordon Ramsay walks out and, like, Joe [Bastianich] and Graham [Elliot]. I think there is this moment of me, if I remember from the first episode, where I'm fanning myself and crying and that is totally legit. I was super overwhelmed."

On the show's fifth season, the contestants made their signature dish. Whatever that may be, the contestants cooked what they thought would show off their skills to the judges.