Who is Anne Burrell, the TV chef who coached the ‘Worst Cooks in America’? How did she die at 55?

Anne Burrell, the TV chef who coached culinary fumblers through hundreds of episodes of “Worst Cooks in America,” passed away on Tuesday, June 17, at her New York home. She was 55.

The news of her death was confirmed by the Food Network, where Anne began her two-decade television career. 

According to the news agency Associated Press (AP), the police were called to her address before 8 am Tuesday and found an unresponsive woman who was soon pronounced dead. The police department had not released the woman’s name, but records show it was Anne's address.

Survivors include her husband, Stuart Claxton, whom she married in 2021, and his son, her mother and her two siblings.

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.