At 29, Bhupinderjit Kaur Chana has a lot cooking — quite literally. The Calgary-born high school teacher, dancer, and now one of the Top 12 contestants on MasterChef Canada is stirring hearts across the country with her infectious passion for food and community. Known to most as Bhu, she’s proof that you don’t have to choose just one dream: sometimes, you can dance, teach, and cook your way into all of them.
For Bhu, food isn’t just sustenance, it’s therapy. After a long day of teaching math and science, she finds herself unwinding not on a couch, but at her kitchen counter. “Cooking helps me reset,” she says. “When one part of my brain burns out, I go to another—teaching uses logic, dance uses emotion, and cooking brings me peace.”
Her journey to the MasterChef kitchen began almost accidentally. One casual scroll on Instagram changed everything. “I saw an ad saying MasterChef Canada was casting again after six years,” Bhu recalls. “As a joke, my friends and I had filmed a fake audition tape years ago, but this time, I decided to actually go for it.” A few months later, she was standing in the iconic MasterChef kitchen, apron on, heart racing. “I was shocked when I got the call. It didn’t feel real until I was there.” Since then, she’s been flooded with love from friends, family, her dance troupe, and especially her students, who now proudly watch their teacher on national television.
That same mix of surprise and joy colors her approach to food. Her go-to dish? Aloo Mutter Paneer Ravioli—a cross-cultural fusion that sums up who she is. “I love taking Indian dishes and reimagining them,” she says. “Like turning aloo paratha into a French choux pastry - same soul, new form.” For her, every plate is a blank canvas, each dish an opportunity to merge memories with modernity.
Her earliest food memory goes back to folding samosas with her mother. “I must’ve folded over a thousand,” she laughs. “It was our family tradition, an entire day of folding, frying, and storytelling”: Lessons that still shape her cooking today.
When she’s not teaching or cooking, Bhu leads the Madhuban Performing Arts dance team in Calgary. What began as a fun fitness class turned into a deep cultural connection. “I went from being a student to a performer, to now leading the team,” she says. Her troupe’s most recent production, I Sita, reimagines the Ramayan through a woman’s perspective—a story she both acted and danced in.
What drives her through all of it is community. Whether it’s a classroom, a kitchen, or a dance floor, Bhu builds spaces where people feel seen, heard, and fed, in every sense of the word. “When I cook, I want people to feel heart and community,” she says. “That’s what food is meant to do—bring people together.”
From classrooms in Calgary to national television, Bhu Chana is crafting something much bigger than a dish; she’s creating connection. And every time she steps into that kitchen, she’s not just representing herself, but a generation of South Asian Canadians blending heritage with hope—one plate at a time.
