Anna Haugh has been announced as the new judge for MasterChef: The Professionals.
The chef will join Gregg Wallace and Marcus Wareing on the next series, taking over from Monica Galetti after she recently revealed that she was taking a break from the show.
The news was announced on BBC’s Morning Live. Anna, who is a resident chef on the BBC show, was congratulated by hosts Gethin Jones and Kym Marsh.
“I’m going to be really tough, really mean, I’m going to start sabotaging,” Anna joked when Kym asked what kind of judge she was going to be.
“I love to see talent. I love to see people fulfil their potential, and that’s really what this show is all about,” she went on to say. “So I’m incredibly proud and very excited to be part of it.”
A tweet from the MasterChef UK account said that they were “delighted” to welcome Anna as a judge, promising that she will bring “a wealth of culinary expertise and experience” to the BBC series.
Anna is the founder and head chef of Myrtle restaurant in Chelsea, London, which offers “modern European cooking with an Irish influence”.
Born in Dublin, Anna has previously worked for Gordon Ramsay and appeared as a guest judge on Hell’s Kitchen in 2013.
As well as her role on Morning Live, Anna makes regular appearances on Saturday Kitchen and was previously a chef on BBC’s Ready Steady Cook.
The chef will be familiar to MasterChef fans, having appeared as a guest judge alongside John Torode and Gregg Wallace.
The upcoming series of MasterChef: The Professionals will be the 15th series. The show sees professional chefs compete against each other in a range of cooking challenges.
The series is a spin-off from MasterChef, along with Celebrity MasterChef and Junior MasterChef, which has been reproduced in several countries around the world.
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