This ‘MasterChef’ Episode Revealed Where Contestants Stay During Production

Coordinating reality TV productions can require just as much work as scripted series, movies, and shows, especially when you're dealing with competition-style shows that feature a bunch of different people in front of the camera. Keeping track of the cast and putting them up in a hotel and taking care of their accommodations is no walk in the park.

Take a show like MasterChef, which puts its culinary contestants through the wringer. Where do MasterChef contestants stay during filming?

In the seventh episode of Season 3 of MasterChef, contestants were woken up by the judges' panel at 3 a.m. to get ready and head down to the hotel kitchen in order to prepare breakfast for the building. The challenge probably held extra weight for the prospective culinary experts given the fact that they essentially have to live with everyone they were about to cook for.

Hard to live down everyone making fun of your runny eggs ...

So it seems that all the MasterChef contestants stay in a hotel together (in separate rooms, of course). What makes setting accommodations easier for a show like MasterChef is that for the most part, contestants are visiting the same location for the duration of filming.

While the show is edited down to a few challenges, contestants are usually required to be on set for a whopping 12 hours a day, and there's a lot of downtime while on set before they actually go on camera.

Now to Love reported on some of the Australian version of the program's "unsung" heroes, like Leigh Dowling, who is one of over 200 different crew members who are dedicated employees to the program. Leigh washes all of the dirty dishes on the show ... literally every single one.

And with all of the contestants and different meals/sauces/appetizers/desserts that get prepared, it's not hard to imagine how many dishes pile up.

MasterChef executive producer Margaret Bashfield said of the series' official dishwasher, "Leigh washes everything you see. He's the happiest bloke on the team, even when he gets pots that are horribly burnt on the bottom."

Some other little facts: The cameras keep on rolling even when the clock stops after a challenge is completed. And earlier seasons of the show forced chefs to live in a "bubble," and they were only allowed two 10-minute phone calls a week to their families.

However, more recent seasons relaxed those rules, and now contestants participate a bit more in social media interactions and they do get to talk to their loved ones a bit more. This makes sense! If you want people to cook better, injecting a bit more love into their lives is a surefire way to get that done.

You can watch new episodes of MasterChef on Fox at 8 p.m. EST.