Poh also recounted her experience when she auditioned for the first season of MasterChef Australia back in 2009 and how judges Matt Preston, George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan questioned her for making a nouvelle cuisine dish.
"[The judges] were like 'Why did you do that?' and I said 'Well I guess because I don't actually cook Asian that much,'" she said.
"But then I very quickly felt, not pressure, I knew it worked to my advantage to play to what I looked like because it makes you an easy character to identify in a sea of contestants where everyone's grappling to get airtime or be seen and understood."
"I very quickly realised 'Oh ok I'm an Asian girl cooking Asian food.' And I was happy with that because at the time I was really interested in learning all the cultural dishes that I grew up with so it accidentally played into what I was going through at the time."
The TV chef added that putting people in boxes has a negative side.
"I feel a lot of pressure to tell stories that I don't feel relate to me," Poh confessed.
"I feel like the more we try to pigeonhole, the more we're segregating at the same time and I think that's really dangerous.
"I don't identify with being a woman at all, I identify with being a human or being an Asian - I just see myself as a citizen of the world."
Poh returned to the MasterChef kitchen for this year's All Star season and made it to the top six.
Shortly after her elimination, the season one runner-up spoke about the cultural representation on the 2020 season compared to when she was first on in 2009.
"I feel like in the first few seasons there was quite little representation and I could probably get away with more in a way. It was nice to have that bar raised and have the Khanhs, the Brendans, the Aminas and the Roses representing these cultures and it felt really good," she told Now To Love.
"Cultural food is where it's at for me – I will dine high-end once a year but for me it's all about peasant cooking and how the food is informed by cultures, that's what really gets me going."
