TV Chef Anne Burrell, ‘Worst Cooks in America’ Star, dies at 55 — remembering her bold culinary Legacy

TV chef Anne Burrell, known for guiding kitchen novices on hundreds of episodes of “Worst Cooks in America,” passed away Tuesday at her New York home at the age of 55.

The Food Network, where Burrell launched her television career with “Iron Chef America” and starred in several other shows, confirmed her death. The cause has not yet been disclosed, and an autopsy is scheduled.

Police responded to her residence before 8 a.m. Tuesday and found a woman unresponsive, who was later pronounced dead. Although the police did not release her name, records confirm the address belonged to Burrell.

Burrell was still active on TV as recently as April, demonstrating her signature chicken Milanese with escarole salad on NBC’s “Today” show. Earlier this spring, she competed against other top chefs on Food Network’s “House of Knives.”

In a statement, the network said, “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.”

Known for her bold and flavourful 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.”

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.