Anne Burrell, TV chef who coached the 'Worst Cooks in America,' dies at
55
[June 18, 2025]
By JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — TV chef Anne Burrell, who coached culinary fumblers
through hundreds of episodes of “Worst Cooks in America,” died Tuesday
at her New York home. She was 55.
The Food Network, where Burrell began her two-decade television career
on “Iron Chef America” and went on to other shows, confirmed her death.
The cause was not immediately clear, and medical examiners were set to
conduct an autopsy.
Police were called to her address before 8 a.m. Tuesday and found an
unresponsive woman who was soon pronounced dead. The police department
did not release the woman’s name, but records show it was Burell's
address.
Burrell was on TV screens as recently as April, making chicken Milanese
cutlets topped with escarole salad in one of her many appearances on
NBC's “Today” show. She faced off against other top chefs on the Food
Network's “House of Knives” earlier in the spring.
“Anne was a remarkable person and culinary talent — teaching, competing
and always sharing the importance of food in her life and the joy that a
delicious meal can bring,” the network said in a statement.
Known for her bold and flavorful but not overly fancy dishes, and for
her spiky platinum-blonde hairdo, Burrell and various co-hosts on “Worst
Cooks in America” led teams of kitchen-challenged people through a crash
course in savory self-improvement.
On the first show in 2010, contestants presented such unlikely personal
specialties as cayenne pepper and peanut butter on cod, and penne pasta
with sauce, cheese, olives and pineapple. The accomplished chefs had to
taste the dishes to evaluate them, and it was torturous, Burrell
confessed in an interview with The Tampa Tribune at the time.
Still, Burrell persisted through 27 seasons, making her last appearance
in 2024.
“If people want to learn, I absolutely love to teach them,” she said on
ABC's “Good Morning America” in 2020. “It’s just them breaking bad
habits and getting out of their own way.”
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Chef Anne Burrell attends City Harvest Presents The 2025 Gala:
Carnaval on April 22, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP,
File)
 Burrell was born Sept. 21, 1969, in
the central New York town of Cazenovia, where her parents ran a
flower store. She earned an English and communications degree from
Canisius University and went on to a job as a headhunter but hated
it, she said in a 2008 interview with The Post-Standard of Syracuse.
Having always loved cooking, she soon enrolled in the Culinary
Institute of America, for which she later taught. She graduated in
1996, spent a year at an Italian culinary school and then worked in
upscale New York City restaurants for a time.
“Anytime Anne Burrell gets near hot oil, I want to be around,” Frank
Bruni, then-food critic at the New York Times, enthused in a 2007
review.
By the next year, Burrell was hosting her own Food Network show,
“Secrets of a Restaurant Chef,” and her TV work became a focus. Over
the years she also wrote two cookbooks, “Cook Like a Rock Star” and
“Own Your Kitchen: Recipes to Inspire and Empower,” and was involved
with food pantries, juvenile diabetes awareness campaigns and other
charities.
Burrell's own tastes, she said, ran simple. She told The
Post-Standard her favorite food was bacon and her favorite meal was
her mother's tuna fish sandwich.
“Cooking is fun,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be scary. It’s
creating something nurturing.”
Survivors include her husband, Stuart Claxton, whom she married in
2021, and his son, her mother and her two siblings.
“Anne’s light radiated far beyond those she knew, touching millions
across the world,” the family said in a statement released by the
Food Network.
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