Anne Burrell is Obsessed with Spatulas and Wooden Spoons
Anne Burrell is a celebrity chef most well-known for hosting and judging Food Network‘s Worst Cooks in America. She’s popular among her fans for many different reasons, ranging from her gregarious personality to her culinary expertise to her hair and fashion choices.
She’s fun to watch on TV, and brings a great sense of humor to whatever show she appears on. She’s a figure that excites her fans and draws viewers in, and has been doing so for years.
Anne Burrell’s start
Anne Burrell began studying cooking in the 1990s. When she was 23, she realized that she wasn’t happy in the job she was in, so she decided to attend culinary school. She received her first culinary degree at the Culinary Institute of America, before progressing on to study cooking in Italy at a school for foreign chefs.
Once she finished her culinary education, she worked in various restaurants in and around northern Italy.
When she returned to the United States, she was immediately put in proximity to stardom. She became a sous chef at Lidia Bastianich’s restaurant, Fidilia, and continued to move up to bigger positions in other New York Italian restaurants.
She also got her start with Food Network in 2005, and served as a sous chef on the pilot of Iron Chef America. In 2008, she got her own show on Food Network, called Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. On this show she helped viewers learn things about restaurant cooking that they could apply in their own home kitchens.
Worst Cooks in America
Anne Burrell really became a household name in 2010, when she started on the cooking competition Worst Cooks in America. This show focused on finding the most inept cooks in the country and putting them through a boot camp where Burrell and another judge would teach them how to cook. Viewers picked up on the show for the comedy of these poor cooks struggling with basic culinary skills and for the progress the cooks would make over the course of the season.
The show was a hit — and it’s continued for ten years and twenty seasons.
Burrell’s personal cooking preferences
Burrell has a deep love for cooking, and everything that goes with it. She’s talked previously about how she loves cooking stores per AOL, and that she “still get[s] turned on when I go into kitchen supply stores and see wooden spoons, rubber spatulas, pots and pans.”
Burrell probably has a fully stocked kitchen, but there is something exciting to seeing brand-new supplies. In fact, this is one of Burrell’s favorite parts of cooking!
Farmer’s markets are just as exciting for Burrell. Farmer’s markets frequently have very high quality food that’s locally sourced — so they’re both good for the local economy and for the environment. For chefs, knowing where food comes from is an important part of knowing how to cook, so Burrell often visits the farmer’s market for her own kitchen.
She also still enjoys cooking at home. Her favorite thing to cook at home is Bucatini all’Amatriciana. Bucatini is a noodle that’s like a thicker spaghetti noodle, but hollow; Amatriciana sauce is a tomato sauce that incorporates cured pork and pecorino cheese. According to Burrell, it contains “my holy trinity, olive oil, salt and bacon.”
Anne Burrell’s cooking skills might be leagues above the rest of us, but she still gives advice that’s applicable to home cooks and beginners. She’s open about her life and her cooking, and for that reason many of her fans are inspired by what she does on TV. She’s a celebrity chef, but on top of that she’s a teacher. At the end of the day, she wants to share her love of cooking with all of us.
