It’s the season of garlic mashed potatoes, slow-roasted turkeys, and sweet potato casseroles filled with obscene amounts of butter. There’s no better time than Thanksgiving to brush up on your kitchen skills. And luckily, there’s a slew of celebrity chefs eager to teach you how to ditch the menu for a recipe book.
Between Giada and Guy Fieri and Nigella and Anthony Bourdain, there are plenty of A-list celebrity chefs to choose from. But which one’s the best? It depends on who you ask.
Barefoot Contessa fans will tell you that Ina Garten’s soul food is the best in the game. Lovers of 30-minute-or-less meals will tell you Rachel Ray is their girl. For the second year in a row, we analyzed data on every state’s favorite celebrity chef—and the differences in preference between states was stark.
New York’s a fan of health nut slash clean eating advocate, Jamie Oliver, while Washington, Oregon, and Utah all hail The Great British Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood as their número uno.
Read on to see which states gave brownie points to their favorite chef—and if you agree with your state’s top pick.
Interesting Findings
— New Jersey’s most-searched celeb chef is Giada: the OG queen of italian cuisine. Itallians make up 20% of the population in the Garden State, so it’s easy to see why residents are picking pasta and cannolis over a burger and fries.
— Louisiana opted for a chef devoted to its native cuisine by favoring cajun master and exuberant TV personality, Emeril Lagasse as their guy. “BAM!” Go, Emeril.
— Las Vegas has upped its food scene in recent years, so we’re not surprised that Nevada couldn’t decide on who to crown as their top pick. The state settled on a five-way tie between Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsay, Guy Fieri, Robert Irvine, and Wolfgang Puck.
— Oklahoma hasn’t forgotten about its hometown native, Ree Drummond (a.k.a. The Pioneer Woman). Drummond went from blogger to book author, becoming the first TV chef to land a gig on the Food Network after being discovered online.
— 11 states back Ace of Cake’s star Duff Goldman as their favorite, which is more states than any other chef. Clearly, the do-good, Baltimore-based cake chef wins points in plenty of peoples’ books.
— 20% of Hawaii’s population is Japanese, making it the second-largest ethnic group in the state. Unsurprisingly, Hawaiians love Japanese chef extraordinaire Masaharu Morimoto.
Favorite celebrity chefs in each state
Alaska: Alton Brown
Alabama: Anne Burrell
Arizona: Anthony Bourdain
Arkansas: Anne Burrell
California: Anthony Bourdain
Colorado: Alton Brown
Connecticut: Ina Garten
Delaware: Duff Goldman
District of Columbia: Prue Leith
Florida: Rachel Ray
Georgia: Alton Brown
Hawaii: Masaharu Morimoto
Idaho: Anne Burrell
Illinois: Duff Goldman
Indiana: Duff Goldman
Iowa: Rachel Ray
Kansas: Guy Fieri
Kentucky: Guy Fieri
Louisiana: Emeril Lagasse
Maine: Martha Stewart
Maryland: Duff Goldman
Massachusetts: Ina Garten
Michigan: Duff Goldman
Minnesota: Paul Hollywood
Mississippi: Duff Goldman
Missouri: Guy Fieri
Montana: Anne Burrell
Nebraska: Rachel Ray
Nevada: Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsay, Guy Fieri, Robert Irvine, Wolfgang Puck
New Hampshire: Duff Goldman
New Jersey: Giada De Laurentiis
New Mexico: Duff Goldman
New York: Jamie Oliver
North Carolina: Rachel Ray
North Dakota: Rachel Ray
Ohio: Michael Symon
Oklahoma: Ree Drummond
Oregon: Paul Hollywood
Pennsylvania: Duff Goldman
Rhode Island: Giada De Laurentiis
South Carolina: Anne Burrell
South Dakota: Anne Burrell
Tennessee: Duff Goldman
Texas: Duff Goldman
Utah: Paul Hollywood
Vermont: Martha Stewart
Virginia: Guy Fieri
Washington: Paul Hollywood
West Virginia: Anne Burrell
Wisconsin: Alton Brown
Wyoming: Alton Brown
Methodology
To determine each state’s favorite cook in the kitchen, we analyzed Google search data for the most-searched chefs in the past year.
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