Mukul

Mukul is a 38-year-old operations manager from Edinburgh who competed in the heats of MasterChef UK

Series 22 (2026). Raised in Dehradun in northern India, his cooking is rooted in his family’s Punjabi heritage

— a kitchen, as he describes it, always filled with bold spices, slow-cooked curries, and generous,

comforting food. He cites ghee as his favourite ingredient: “the taste of home,” whose aroma alone recalls

the dishes he grew up eating. He cooks those flavours in a deliberately modern, plated style.

Mukul entered the competition (Masterchef UK) to test how his home cooking would stand up in a professional environment,

and his longer-term ambition is to open a restaurant that brings together authentic Indian food — particularly

the bold Punjabi dishes of his upbringing — with the stories, culture, and music behind them, in a single

immersive dining experience. This dish, which he framed as “from Punjab to Kerala via Mexico,” is a clear

statement of that diaspora-translation instinct: a South Indian classic, plated on a North Indian staple, in a

Mexican format.