Twenty-four junior home cooks from across the United States visit the MasterChef kitchen and immediately face difficult lunch and breakfast challenges that include mystery box challenges and creating as many perfect banana splits as they can.

The 20 junior home cooks face a carnival-themed challenge that will test their leadership and communication abilities as they prepare meals for Circus Vargas performers.

The 18 remaining junior home cooks must prepare a worthy dish with a fish that they must debone entirely on their own in the hopes of winning a special advantage; the cooks reflect their cultural heritages through their cooking styles.

The Top 16 junior home cooks are split into three teams before they are given only 20 minutes to create as many delicious English trifles as possible; the team that fails to impress the judges are challenged to recreate three identical sliders.

The top 14 junior home cooks face a difficult mystery box challenge where they must learn to butcher an entire duck and make a dish from it; The cooks are paired up and challenged to create a dozen of the tastiest cupcakes they can make.

The Top 14 young home cooks visit the great outdoors to feed hungry campers with delicious recipes that may be featured in a magazine; the losing team faces a pressure test to make a coconut cream pie with a special twist.

The Top 12 are visited by the children from Kidz Bop, who introduces a special twist on the young cook's next mystery box challenge; the winning cook secures a needed advantage in a "blast from the past" elimination challenge.

The Top 10 junior home cooks are put into teams and compete against one another to roll out the longest pasta sheet that they can make as quickly as they can; The losing team faces an elimination challenge that tests their ability to make Éclairs.

The Top 10 face a difficult team challenge in which they prepare dishes for a group of important female role models, who will determine who make it to the Top 8; the losing team must replicate a 3-Michelin-star dish after a Gordon masterclass.

The Top Eight are put into pairs and must overcome a mystery box challenge that tests their creativity as they must use corn to create a delectable dish, after which they get ready for a tag-team challenge with they will make tapas.

The Top Six cooks are given full control over the kitchen at Mélisse, a Michelin Star-rated restaurant in Los Angeles, where they must appease hungry and expectant guests who will determine who will progress to the semifinals.

The junior home cooks face their final mystery box challenge, which tests their ability to create a dish that draws inspiration from their loved ones; those who risk elimination elevate a secret ingredient to its highest flavorful peaks to remain.

Twenty-four junior home cooks have been whittled down to just the final three, who give their last-ditch efforts to impress the judges with the best three-course meal that they have ever prepared in their young lives.

The final three junior home cooks continue to try to impress the judges by creating the best three-course meal to win the $100,000 grand prize.