Its a competitive cooking reality show, open to amateur and home chefs.[1] Produced by Shine America and One Potato Two Potato, it debuted on July 27, 2010 at 9 pm ET/PT on the Fox Television Network, following one of Ramsay's other series, Hell's Kitchen.

In Australia, there is also a show with the same name.

sterChef is based on the first season of the Australian format, produced by FremantleMedia Australia, which in turn was based on the British BBC series MasterChef. Chef, television personality and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay together with restaurateur and vineyard owner Joe Bastianich and chef Graham Elliot are the judges in the US version of MasterChef. The competition takes place in the MasterChef warehouse which includes a large area with several cooking stations which is overlooked by a balcony, a well-stocked pantry, and a fine-dining seating area used for certain challenges.

Amateur chefs were initially selected through nationwide auditions, selecting a total of one hundred competitors to the start of the televised competition. In the preliminary rounds, each of these had an opportunity to prepare a signature dish for the trio of judges. They were given a limited amount of time to prep their dish, and then given five minutes before the judges to complete the cooking and assembly of the dish, during which the judges ask about their background. The three judges taste the dish, and vote "yes" or "no" to keeping the chef in the competition; two "yes" votes are required for the chef to move on and receive a MasterChef apron, while those that fail to do so leave the competition. This process weans the field to about one-third of the original size.

One or more rounds are then used to trim the number of remaining chefs to about 16 or 18. One type of challenge has the chefs performing a routine task such as dicing onions, during which the judges will observe their technique.

Subsequently, the formal competition begins typically following a four-event cycle that takes place over two episodes, with a chef eliminated after the second and fourth event. The events typically are:

Mystery Box Challenge: Chefs are each given a box with the same ingredients and must use only those ingredients to create a dish within a fixed amount of time. The judges will select three dishes based on visual appearance and technique alone to taste, and from these three select one winner that will gain an advantage in the Elimination Test.

Elimination Test: The judges take the Mystery Box Challenge winner to the pantry and explain the theme of the Elimination Test in private. This chef is told of their advantages, which can include automatic advancement to the next round, selecting the specific theme of the test, or assigning certain ingredients to specific chefs as to challenge their competition. The rest of the chefs are then informed of the decision, and given five minutes to collect any ingredients from the pantry they need and a fixed amount of time to complete the dish. Judges evaluate all dishes based on taste and visual appeal (although only some of them are featured, at least in the first episodes of a season), and select two dishes as the winners of the competition to become captains in the Team Challenge. The bottom three (or more) dishes are criticized, and the judges select one of those chefs to leave the competition; those that are eliminated must remove their apron and place them on their station before they leave.

Team Challenge: The cooks are taken to an off-site location where they are split into two teams by the team captains, typically through a schoolyard pick. The teams (colored red and blue similar to another Gordon Ramsay competition show, Hell's Kitchen) will typically have to prepare a meal for an odd number of diners (in case of a tie) in a limited amount of time. Diners will sample meals from both teams and will later vote as to which meal they preferred; if a diner does not get a meal from a team due to food not being ready on time, that team automatically forfeits the vote. The losing team will participate in the Pressure Test once they return to the MasterChef kitchen. One such challenge involves a "restaurant takeover" which involves the cooks taking the place of the staff of a particular restaurant.

Pressure Test: Members of the losing team compete against each other to make a standard dish within a limited amount of time that requires a great degree of cooking finesse, such as a souffle. Some of the losing team members may not have to participate determined by the judges or the team captain, and they are sent to watch the challenge from the balcony along with the winning team members. Each dish is judged on taste, visual appeal, and technique, and the losing chef is eliminated from the challenge; that chef must remove their apron and place it on their station before they leave the competition.