TV chef Anne Burrell, who coached culinary fumblers through hundreds of episodes of Worst Cooks in America, died on June 17th at her New York home.
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 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 Burrell’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. 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 savoury self-improvement. On the first show in 2010, contestants presented such unlikely personal specialities 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.