How This Blind Woman Won $250K Cash, the MasterChef Title, and a Book Deal
And what you can learn from her story.
Did Christine Ha know she would become completely blind by 2007 yet win the MasterChef title, a $250K cash prize, and a recipe book deal in 2012?
Christine has a Vietnamese origin. Her parents immigrated to the USA in 1975, after the Vietnam war, and started living in Los Angeles, California.
A few years later, on May 9, 1979, Christine was born.
She spent her early years in Lakewood and Long Beach with her family. Then, at one point, her family moved to Houston, Texas.
Christine’s mother was a very loving yet overprotective woman. She was a good cook too. But she didn’t let little Christine come to the kitchen and help her. She always told her to get away from the sharp knives or hot stoves.
Unfortunately, Christine’s mother died from lung cancer when Christine was only 14. So, she didn’t have the opportunity to learn cooking from her mother.
Christine started to learn cooking in her second year in college when she moved out of the dorm into an old apartment with a small kitchen.
As her mother left her no recipes, she went to a bookstore and bought a used cookbook. She also bought a cheap set of knives, pots, and pans. Then she read the recipes word for word and tried to execute those in her small kitchen.
Christine tried to understand the fundamentals of cooking through the process.
It was really hard for her. She had a lot to try and fail — and learn. But the thing is — she really loved cooking. So she refused to give up.
In a talk, while recalling those old days, she said, “My mother may not have taught me how to cook. But she did instill in me perseverance. And I didn’t give up cooking no matter what even though I was pretty bad at it.”
Christine continued her cooking practice and eventually made a lot of improvements. She was getting better and better. Even her friends started appreciating her cooking skills.
But during the time she was getting into cooking, slowly she was losing her vision.
“I was twenty years old and I was in college. At the same time, I started losing my vision. It started in one of my eyes, my right eye. It went blurry. So I went home and I changed out my contact lens thinking that it was just a dirty contact lens. I put on the new one, a disposable one, and it was still blurry. So I went to the eye doctor,” Christine explained.
But that eye doctor couldn’t find out what was wrong with her eye. So he referred Christine to a neuro-ophthalmologist. Sadly, despite the necessary diagnosis, the neuro-ophthalmologist failed to figure out the actual cause of her vision loss.
Eventually, she started losing her vision in both eyes.
Five years later, at the age of 25, Christine was correctly diagnosed with Neuromyelitis Optica, a rare autoimmune condition that damages the spinal cord and the optic nerves of the eyes.
Christine remembered she had a severe spinal cord inflammation when she was 23 that paralyzed her whole body below the neck. She recovered from that after several months of treatment.
Christine’s vision deteriorated over the years, and by 2007, at the age of only 27, she became completely blind.
“People ask me what I do see. It’s like coming out of a really hot shower and gazing into that steamy mirror. That’s the kind of what I see. So washed-out colors. Very vague shapes. Mostly shadows. And that’s my world.”
After losing her vision, Christine thought she would have to give up on her dream of cooking.
The situation was this — she couldn’t even make a simple thing like a peanut butter jelly sandwich. She was spreading everything over the counter and failing to align two slices of bread together perfectly.
She felt devastated and broken, thinking about how she would cook for herself.
After so much thought, Christine decided to embrace her difficulty and relearn everything from scratch, using her other senses.
Gradually, she learned how to walk, shop, and even read, coping with her vision impairment. With time, her other senses got stronger as well. And she learned how to cook, using smell, taste, and sound.
“Now that my eyes don’t function so well, I have to rely on my ears, my nose, my hands, and my mouth, to inform me of my surroundings,” Christine explained.
“I believe that losing my vision made my other four senses more focused. And so when I taste food now, I find that I notice a lot more the different nuances like the texture, temperature, flavors, ingredients used in a dish.”
She developed a system for cooking. She organized her kitchen to reach every object by herself with ease. From knives to spices, you’ll find everything in her kitchen well organized.
Christine got married to John Suh in 2011, and then one year later, in 2012, she did something crazy. She applied for the MasterChef season 3.
In her words, “The producers were coming to a nearby town and holding open call auditions. They’ve said that someone with vision impairment that can cook is an amazing story. And the rest of America needed to learn about how a blind cook works in the kitchen.”
Gordon Ramsay told Christine at the time of the interview, that in the history of MasterChef, they’ve never had a blind contestant. But he also made it clear that Christine would be judged like everybody else in the competition.
Christine recreated a recipe from her childhood memory and made a dish named Vietnamese catfish with pickled vegetables.
After testing the dish, Ramsay said, “For me, that’s one of the most delicious dishes I’ve tasted so far.”
The other two judges, Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich were also impressed. Finally, they gave Christine a white MasterChef apron, the ticket to compete in the MasterChef Season 3.
You can have a look at the interview here.
Christine competed against the other 17 visually-able contestants. Not only that, she cooked in a kitchen completely unknown to her. For a blind person, cooking is extremely tough, and cooking in an unknown kitchen is nearly impossible.
But Christine made it possible.
In the nineteen episodes, she won seven times in both individual and team challenges. Moreover, she was placed three times in the top three groups.
She kept cooking amazing dishes one after another and impressed the judges. Finally, on September 10, 2012, Christine was announced the winner of the competition. She got the MasterChef title, the MasterChef trophy, $250K cash, and a cookbook deal.
With this, the whole world witnessed what is possible when you refuse to give up and keep believing in yourself and your ability.
But how did Christine manage to cook so many delicious dishes without even seeing them?
“I think it helped that I couldn’t see the cameras on me on the show. Because I’m not able to see what other people are doing around me… I can focus 100% on what I am doing,” Christine revealed.
Her ability to slice and dice was also extraordinary and lovely to watch. She always tasted everything before putting it into the dish. And her every move was precise and cautious.
“The lady has an extraordinary palate, a palate of incredible finesse. She picks up hot ingredients, touches them, and she thinks about this image on the plate. She has the most disciplined execution on a plate that we’ve ever seen. But the palate is where it’s just extraordinary. And honestly, I know chefs with Michelin stars that don’t have palates like hers,” MasterChef judge Chef Gordon Ramsay expressed his thoughts about Christine.
Since winning the MasterChef Season 3, Christine has done many things.
She published her cookbook, Recipes from My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food, on May 14, 2013, which eventually became a New York Times bestseller.
She traveled to different places all over the world and learned more about other cultures through experiencing foods.
She has done some work for the US embassy abroad as a culinary envoy in other countries. She also co-hosted a Canadian TV show with Carl Heinrich called Four Senses, a cooking show that is geared towards the vision impaired and novice cooks.
In 2014, Christine was awarded the Hellen Keller Achievement Award by the American Foundation for the Blind for her extraordinary personal achievements.
She appeared on MasterChef Vietnam Season 3 as one of the judges in 2015. She also appeared on the MasterChef US as a guest. She did a lot of talks and public speaking.
However, Christine finished her Masters of Fine Arts and Creative Writing.
Despite being visually impaired, she has done a lot that we — men with excellent vision — can never imagine doing.
Christine’s story teaches us to be confident and fearless.
It inspires us to look on the bright side and do our best all the time. It also tells us not to complain about what we cannot change and to focus on things that we can improve.
Christine believes that we all are capable of breaking our boundaries and doing more than we think we can do. In her words, — “Everyone is very capable, much more capable than they think they are.”
All we need is to dream big and work consistently to make it a reality.
I hope Christine’s story will inspire you to do more and achieve more in life.
Thank you for reading!
Sources: The Blind Cook, Wikipedia, LA Times, Christine Ha — YouTube, Goalcast, MasterChef Season 3, TEDx Talks.
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