She hasn’t hacked off a finger or made her microwave explode, but Brooklynite Rachel Coleman may very well be one of the “Worst Cooks in America.”
That’s the title of a new Food Network reality show airing on Sundays at 10 p.m. and Coleman is a contestant.
“I’ve never burned my kitchen down but I’ve burned a lot of stuff,” the Bushwick resident told this paper.
“I called her food sloppy but tasty,” said Chef Anne Burrell, who served as Coleman’s mentor on the show. “She just was a hot mess.”
Coleman’s biggest problem was her disorganization. She often failed to read recipes before cooking, which left her searching for ingredients and scrambling to complete steps.
“Once I tried to make this fish thing with capers and olives but I didn’t really follow any recipe. I just put things together. I didn’t know how the ingredients really worked so I ended up with this dry fish with bones in it. I had a few friends over and they politely ate it but I was disappointed,” said Coleman, who was just 23 years old when filming “Worst Cooks in America.”
“She was very messy and got flustered easy,” Burrell recalled of Coleman’s time on the show. “She would regularly get into a pattern where she would get stuck. It would take her a little time to get started but throughout every challenge, she made her way through it pretty well.”
Now back home in Bushwick, Coleman is visiting her favorite restaurants and grocery stores in search of great meals and fresh ingredients. In fact, she’s eager to try new recipes, which she promises to read from start to finish.
“I’ve been cooking a lot lately,” she said.
Rather than buy her groceries at Whole Foods in Manhattan, Coleman favors her neighborhood Food Bazaar supermarket, as well as local mom and pop shops.
“The cool thing about Bushwick is there’s a lot of little speciality stores,” she said. “My favorite place to buy groceries is the Food Bazaar. It’s huge and everything is really cheap.”
Next up for Coleman is tackling French food. She’s been finding inspiration for dishes at Brooklyn’s distinguished French eateries, such as Le Barricou at 533 Grand Street in Williamsburg.
“If I’m going to splurge, I like Le Barricou,” she said.
“I would really like to make traditional French food. That would be fun. I just saw ‘Julie and Julia’ and it made me want to do traditional French food.”
Alas, she has no plans to debone a duck.
