MasterChef recap: The one where they try to kill off judge Andy with chilli

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In the world of music, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are a hugely successful band of enviable longevity that has fused rock with funk while also proving capable of disarmingly tender ballads on occasion. In the world of food, red hot chilli peppers are what you eat when you are less interested in nutrition than you are in seriously hurting yourself. It is the latter which tonight's immunity challenge involves, and there is not a disarmingly tender ballad in sight. There is, though, Katy Perry, who on this occasion is incorrect: there's no cold here, just hot.

Pete, Elise, Kishwar, Linda and Dan – having solved last night's mystery box – are the quintet cooking for immunity from the next elimination. "It's going to be hotter in here than it's ever been before," says Jock, before beginning to strip. He then explains that they will have to choose from one of the hottest eight chillies on the planet to cook with: the mildest of them is over 60 times hotter than a jalapeno. To be clear, these are not ingredients, they are weapons. They will not be serving food to the judges, they will be assaulting them.

The chillies have colourful names, like the Lemon Blast, the Chocolate Trinidad Scorpion, the Hurt Berry, and the I Will Murder You And Spit On Your Grave I Swear To God You Scum. Then there is the hottest of all, the Carolina Reaper, named for its deadly heat and its ability to play the Shaggy song O Carolina.

Each amateur randomly draws the chilli they must cook with, and is then forced to taste it, even though Channel Ten claims to abide by the Geneva Convention. Up on the balcony the spectators laugh hysterically at the severe bodily harm being inflicted on their fellow contestants. The chances of someone dying tonight are very much non-zero. For once, when a contestant's head explodes in a fireball, it'll be hard to tell whether it's an ad break or just part of the cook.

75 minutes to cook a dish featuring their chosen chilli. They may try to quench the heat of the pepper, or they may choose to unleash its full fury, or they may choose to simply kick the judges repeatedly in the groin to save time. Whoever cooks the best dish and/or kicks the groins the hardest wins immunity.

While the cooks cook, the judges try the chillies, causing Melissa to start yodelling and Andy to regret all his life choices. "Feels like my teeth are sweating," he says, as all his mistakes flash before his eyes.

Elise explains her dish to Jock and Andy. Jock and Andy tell her it won't work. Surprisingly, despite being a MasterChef contestant, Elise listens to the judges and decides to make a dish that will work instead. She may struggle, however, as she keeps calling her chilli "Lemon Burst" instead of "Lemon Blast". And if you don't know the difference between a burst and a blast, how can you survive in the kitchen?

As the saying goes, if you can't stand the heat, make ice-cream, and that's exactly what Dan is doing. He hopes that in making chilli ice-cream, he will achieve balance, the cold creaminess of the ice-cream balancing out the complete-terrible-ingredient-to-put-in-ice-creamness of the chilli. He takes his time with his crème anglaise, wanting to make it an absolutely perfect sin against God.

"Mate, what's going on?" Andy asks Pete, a loaded question if there ever was one. The judges taste Pete's sauce and question whether there is any chilli in it at all. They can't taste the Hurt Berry. "I want it to hurt more," says Melissa, and there's an audio grab to keep stored away for future use. The judges are furious that Pete's dish is barely even inedible, so he starts pumping his sauce full of Hurt Berry. By the end of this cook the sauce will be so infused with Hurt Berry it could star Jeremy Renner.

Meanwhile Dan is still making chilli ice-cream and nobody is stopping him.

Kishwar is cooking with the Chocolate Trinidad Scorpion chilli, so named for its eight legs and relaxed island lifestyle. She says she's beginning to understand what this chilli does to a dish: i.e. poison it. She declares her intention to make her mudcrab curry hotter and hotter and hotter until anyone who eats it begins to bleed from their armpits. "It's just an honour to eat your food," says Melissa, in the manner of a gladiator declaring that those about to die salute Caesar.

Linda is grinding an inordinate number of chillis. "Phwoar!" cries Andy, both aroused and terrified by the prospect of consuming such a mountain of chilli. Melissa is in tears as she prays to all the saints to make it all stop. But Linda will not be deterred: she came here to chew gum and trigger spontaneous human combustion, and she's all out of gum. Her chilli is called "the God Stopper", and was inspired by a combination of Willy Wonka and Nietzsche.

Time is up, and the amateurs sit back, well satisfied with the brutal attack they are about to launch. Kishwar's curry is first. She claims crab curry is her signature, but she has never before made it to deliberately cause injury. Jock declares it delicious. Melissa thinks the claw was overcooked, which seems a bit petty. Andy wishes the crab was perfect, but we all have dreams don't we.

Elise is next, with her Prawn Pappardelle a la The Human Torch. The judges like it but wish there was more acid in it, addicted as they are to danger.

Next is Linda, who has a kohlrabi salad with eye fillet and God Stopper dressing, a sentence that barely means anything at all. Her hope is that nobody who eats it will ever walk again. Andy eats it and immediately begins to break down into his constituent elements. "Are you OK, Andy?" Linda asks sarcastically, her plan coming together perfectly. Andy declares Linda's dish a triumph. "I'm so glad you didn't put less chilli in there," says Andy, "because I want to die today."

Step up Pete, who was previously seen in command of a sauce that didn't even make anyone vomit, the wuss. His dish is "Scampi Rundown", previously a hit single for Suzi Quatro. He has added more Hurt Berry, and it has worked. It is, to an acceptable extent, both tasty and painful.

Finally Dan and his chilli ice-cream which is awful. It's got so much chilli in it that it bursts into flames.

Wait, no, that was an ad break this time. After the ads, the judges try Dan's bold combination of chilli, chocolate and stupidity, and decide that Dan is such a nice lad they'll pretend it's a good dish. Andy observes that Dan has both components and elements, which he approves of.

Everyone seems to have done quite a good job with their ridiculous ingredients, but who has done the best and will therefore be denied the hypertension of the immunity challenge? In a nutshell, the answer is: Linda. She has proven a worthy foe and will be rewarded.

Tune in next week, when Aaron will panic.

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