What’s behind the scenes on MasterChef Canada’s season three set

Season three of MasterChef Canada began on February 14, bringing with it a new batch of home cooks putting their lives as customer service reps (or insurance brokers or salon managers or cheerleaders) on hold to vie for $100,000 and a trophy. Judges Claudio Aprile, Michael Bonacini and Alvin Leung continue their reign over the hopefuls and the set—a massive 42,000-square-foot (secret) location in Mississauga. Take a look at what went into building it, starting with the kitchen (above), where all of the elimination challenges happen (and the stage, where all of the tears happen). It takes approximately 16 hours of filming over two days to make a single one-hour episode.

Here’s the MasterChef pantry, where contestants forage prior to each elimination challenge. The initial cost to stock the pantry (the biggest of any cooking show) for season one was $28,000, and each subsequent restock costs around $4,500:

And here’s a look in one of the refrigerators: