What we learnt from week four of MasterChef: The Professionals 2018

A useful tip from Marcus in the first episode of the week, who challenged the first round of chefs to make a sausage ravioli with a chasseur sauce. Lots of the contestants chose to cook their sausage meat before filling their ravioli, but Marcus insists that you don’t need to do that – using raw meat inside your pasta gives a nice smooth finish, and makes the pasta much easier to work with.

Monica challenged our chefs to make oysters Rockefeller – essentially an oyster with a herby gratinated topping. A few of our contestants rinsed oysters in water, hoping to make sure there was no shell in the final dish, but in doing so they washed all the flavour off the oyster. Learn how to shuck and prepare oysters here, and take a look at our recipe collection.

Chicken oysters are the most tender, delicious bits of meat on a chicken – they would often be kept as a chef’s treat, though nowadays, we often see them used in restaurant dishes too. They’re nothing to do with normal oysters – other than being delicious and roughly the same size and shape! Knowing how to joint a chicken and where to find the oysters is an indispensable skill for a chef – find out more here.

Pomme purée is a one of the great luxuries in food – perhaps the ultimate humble ingredient, taken to lavish heights. Knowing how to make a really good pomme purée can make almost any dish – check out our guide, right here.

Crispy chicken skin is a fantastic skill to have up your sleeve – it makes a superb, meaty garnish for dishes. The key points are to make sure your skin is pressed between two flat surfaces – Monica does this in a pan with another on top, but you can use two baking trays in the oven too – and to scrape the layer of fat from underneath to get it perfectly crisp.