Celebrity chefs. You see them on your tv. Their recipes flood your various social channels. And their smiling faces grace the covers of glossy magazines in your local grocery store checkout line. Their recipes typically are anywhere from creatively simple to technical and gourmet. However, sometimes they just plain miss the ball. Here are some of the worst recipes from the highest paid chefs.
1. Pioneer Woman’s Egg-in-a-Hole
Every food blogger wants to be the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond. Her humble beginnings led to a food empire and her successful blog snagged her a popular television show. However, she is scooping up ad revenue from this recipe that even her humble beginnings would laugh at: egg in toast. It’s literally an egg, in a slice of toast. Thank goodness she mentions you can use salt and pepper, otherwise this blah recipe would be truly bland.
2. Paula Deen’s English Peas
Can you guess that one of the two ingredients in this no duh recipe is butter? It is Paula Deen, after all. But you’d think that she’d at least instruct you on how to cook fresh peas—nope. Canned peas (not even frozen??) plus butter equals this mundane recipe.
3. Rachel Ray’s Microwaved Bacon
How does one microwave bacon It’s certainly a useful skill, but then you realize that Rachel Ray was probably paid more than you make in a week to post a recipe that tells you to lay some bacon on some paper towels and push some buttons.
4. Nigella Lawson’s Blood and Guts Potatoes
Someone got paid to write a recipe that probably tops Honey Boo Boo’s list of favorite foods: blood and guts potatoes. If the name wasn’t enough to make you lose your appetite, the recipe itself will do the trick, as it is simply baked potatoes with ketchup and cheese.
5. Guy Fieri’s Spicy Ketchup
If you want grease and fat-laden recipes, Guy Fieri is your guy. If that isn’t enough of a clue that this Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host is more of a fast-talking, easily amused food critic than a chef then perhaps you deserve this impostor of a recipe. Store-bought ketchup plus spices is all this recipe includes. Perhaps Guy thinks his clientele isn’t as sharp as his gel-spiked hair?
6. Anthony Bourdain’s Carrot Vichy
For all his bad-mouthing other chefs (one of his favorite targets is on this list, try to guess who. Here’s a hint: she, too, uses butter in the recipe listed) he certainly has a few uber-basic recipes in his own repetoire. While there is something to be said about letting a food’s own glory shine in a recipe, should he really have gotten paid to tell us that mushy carrots will taste good with butter and sugar?
7. Alton Brown’s Steamed Asparagus
Alton Brown uses the magic of SCIENCE to tell us how to cook the perfect chicken, the perfect roast, the perfect souffle — and all of these take a bit of practice and skill. However, his website also lists a recipe for microwaved asparagus. While this may be helpful to those who are new to the kitchen, the directions don’t even mention that one must properly trim the asparagus to avoid a tough chew. Vital information to those who clearly know nothing about asparagus.
8. Jamie Oliver’s Brilliant Broccoli
Another no duh recipe. This is especially potent because it comes from a guy who challenges family restaurants to duels of their own signature dish to a game of “who cooked it better” (a bit cocky, don’t you think?). At least he didn’t suggest microwaving.