17 Of Alex Guarnaschelli's Favorite Foods

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Alex Guarnaschelli is a celebrated American chef and cookbook author. She is especially known for having blended French technique with American comfort food, all while incorporating her Italian heritage. Not to mention that she is the executive chef at Butter, a staple in the New York City dining scene. But perhaps Guarnaschelli's most enduring legacy is her career as a TV personality. She has made a significant impact on the culinary media landscape as a judge and competitor on various Food Network shows, including "Chopped," "Iron Chef America," and "The Next Iron Chef." 

Given all these accomplishments, it stands to reason that she would be a good person to look to when searching for new flavors to try. As such, we've put together a list of Guarnaschelli's favorite foods, in the hopes that we may find some inspiration for our own future meals.

Alex Guarnaschelli, like any good Italian-American, loves spaghetti and meatballs. And so far, nothing unusual. But Guarnaschelli likes to partake in this full-bodied meal at midnight, and even considers spaghetti and meatballs a midnight snack. And, she likes it cold. This means that if you, too, crave spaghetti and meatballs as a midnight snack, you don't necessarily have to make it from scratch. As long as you have some leftovers on hand, you should be just as satisfied.

One thing Guarnaschelli did not share, though, was her specific recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. So if you don't have one on hand, consider this special Italian meatball recipe made with ground beef and pork. As you might notice, this recipe has a lot of ingredients and requires a number of steps, so if you can prepare it well ahead of your midnight snack time, you'll be in a good place.

Alex Guarnaschelli famously loves pasta, so it's no surprise that several pasta dishes appear on her list of favorite foods. One of them is pasta carbonara, and more specifically, cheater's carbonara, as she told Tasting Table in an exclusive interview. Cheater's carbonara is a version of the classic dish where milk or cream are used to achieve the creaminess usually accomplished by the combination of eggs and cheese.

But for her, it's not necessarily about cheating at all. As she told Tasting Table, "You're not dealing with such an acute possibility of ending up with an omelet. The cream — it's like a mediator in a divorce." In fact, she is more than comfortable experimenting with her carbonara recipes. One such experiment involves a splash of red wine vinegar, which she adds because "I never think you can have enough acidity, especially when there's so much fat in a recipe." Indeed, pasta carbonara can often be excessively heavy, and that vinegar addition might just be a stroke of genius.

Alex Guarnaschelli loves pizza, because honestly, who doesn't? But given the broad appeal of such a dish, we think it's important to get a little more specific. So of course, in our exclusive interview with her, we asked her what he favorite New York slice of pizza was. As it turns out, her favorite is not in New York City at all but in nearby Jersey City. The slice comes from a restaurant called Razza, which she says "is worth going to."

Though if the thought of crossing the Hudson seems too outlandish, she also said she likes pizza from Scarr's, at least stylistically. But you probably can't go wrong with taste there, either. She also mentions that there are many pizza spots she loves in New York, without mentioning them, unfortunately. Luckily, we have our own list of the best pizza in New York, where you're sure to find something great.

Alex Guarnaschelli's love for Italian food comes through in desserts as well as main meals. As she told Tasting Table in an interview, her go-to order at her favorite Italian bakery–Ferrara Bakery in New York–is the sfogliatelle, a type of pastry that looks like a shell and is filled with cream. She especially likes them warm. But if you get to Ferrara Bakery and they're fresh out of sfogliatelle, you can also try the pignoli cookies, pine nut and almond extract cookies. Guarnaschelli also opts for them regularly.

Meanwhile, if you live nowhere near New York and want to try the sfogliatelle, you can try making them at home with this Italian lobster tail pastry recipe, which is a similar pastry. The process is laborious, but once you get the hang of it, you will be well rewarded. Or you can just order Ferrara Bakery's sfogliatelle straight from Goldbelly. And you may as well throw in the pignoli cookies, for good measure.

Roasting a whole spatchcock chicken may not seem like an easy thing to do, but for a seasoned chef like Alex Guarnaschelli, it's a walk in the park — not to mention the fact that roast chicken recipes are often far simpler than one might think. Adding the spatchcock element, where you remove the bones of the animal before cooking it, is only a negligible extra step.

As Guarnaschelli explained in a Food Network post on X, she prepares this dish at home as a go-to meal along with a lot of potatoes. If you're not sure how to handle the spatchcocking part, we have a handy guide for spatchcocking turkey that can be applied to chicken as well. Just follow the three-step process and then roast the bird according to your preference. Before you balk at this, consider that Guarnaschelli considers this a lazy meal, to the point where she and her family eat the bird and potatoes straight off the tray!

This unique chocolate-hazelnut spread is widely appreciated by Italian palates — it's almost as if it were a genetic preference passed down through the generations. Indeed, Italian-American chef Alex Guarnaschelli seems to love it too. She started snacking on it when she was living in France, where she spread it on toast, or more specifically, on a toasted baguette. In Italy, it tends to be consumed more often on fresh bread.

She also enjoys spreading on strawberries and raspberries, telling AllRecipes, "I think when you're getting that tart, super fruity note from raspberries or strawberries and you get that kind of rich hazelnut note from the Nutella — that's a pretty compelling combo." Nutella is a pretty ubiquitous spread, so it should be easy to find almost anywhere, but any chocolate-hazelnut spread will do for these applications, so feel free to try something fancier, too.

It's hard for any of us to pick just one favorite food. Perhaps it can't even be done. But for Alex Guarnaschelli, there might be one favorite dish that stands out among the others: pasta with pesto. Guarnaschelli had this meal at a restaurant called La Merenda in Nice, France. "It was an ethereal meal that changed my life," she told Business Insider. "Especially the pasta. The pasta being dropped on the hot pesto in front of me made me tear up. It was that good. And so simple."

That is high praise indeed, but unless you're able to fly to Nice, you might not be able to enjoy the same experience. The next best thing might be to make a good pasta with pesto yourself, by following this recipe. All you have to do is toss the ingredients in the food processor and then drop the resulting pesto onto a plate of cooked pasta, or the other way around, as the chef did at La Merenda. And if you make enough pesto, you can have another great meal at your fingertips a few nights later. Just store the pesto in the fridge until you're ready to use it again, and heat it up slightly before tossing it with your pasta.

Alex Guarnaschelli does not have the monopoly on chocolate chip cookies when it comes to favorites, but we certainly can't blame her for considering them a guilty pleasure. As she told 365 Collective, "I love the combination of dark chocolate with a sprinkle of salt and sugar." She also said she likes them best when freshly baked and still warm, paired with a cold glass of milk.

This favorite food also comes with a dose of nostalgia. As she explained, "There is also great comfort in something my mom made me as a kid that I enjoy solo or with my daughter!" Guarnaschelli also likes the smell of butter in freshly baked cookies, and if you do too, you might enjoy this brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe, where the melted brown butter gives more depth of flavor to the cookies, as well as a caramelized nutty taste.

Alex Guarnaschelli is prepared for summer, at least when it comes to having a favorite food for the season. As she told 365 Collective, one of her favorite things to eat is a giant cheese burrito paired with a glass of iced tea made with iced tea cubes. She says these items are best enjoyed while lounging by an infinity pool, and who are we to contradict her?

Hopefully, this infinity pool is located at or near a restaurant, because as it happens, burritos tend to taste better at restaurants. As chef Yara Herrera told Tasting Table in an interview, this is in part because a good restaurant will serve a burrito made with a fresh, homemade tortilla, while at home, you are most likely to reach for the store-bought stuff full of preservatives. The ratio of ingredients and where they're placed within the burrito also matters, so that the whole thing stays compact and the sauces can be properly absorbed.

Alex Guarnaschelli has multiple culinary accomplishments under her belt, including a number of successful cookbooks. One of these, "Italian American Forever: Classic Recipes for Everything You Want to Eat: a Cookbook," includes a recipe for Italian stracciatella soup that she favors above many others. In an interview with Eating Well, Guarnaschelli talked about the stracciatella recipe she included in her book, saying, "My mother would randomly make this soup and I have rarely made any form of chicken soup without Parmesan since."

Indeed, stracciatella soup is essentially a chicken soup made with Parmesan cheese and eggs that have been beaten together to look like they've been all torn up ("stracciare" is Italian for torn up). Although the food shares its name with an ice cream and a type of cheese, it bears no relation to them, other than the appearance of torn up filaments. Whatever the case, this soup seems to be a favorite not only for its strong flavors but also for the element of nostalgia it brings Guarnaschelli when she eats it.

As a chef, Alex Guarnaschelli has foods she likes to cook, foods she likes to eat, and foods that probably fit both criteria. One such dish, as she told The Lancaster Online in an interview, is duck. "I love to cook duck," she said. "I enjoy the thighs, the fat, the breast meat, the bones, the carcasses, the neck, the liver — every part is delicious."

The fat, in particular, may be what Guarnaschelli likes best about cooking duck. This bird famously renders more fat than chicken, which contributes to its tastiness and infuses potatoes or anything else in the same pan with more flavor. Just be sure to score the bird before you cook it, to make sure all that fat comes oozing out. Although she didn't share which duck she likes to cook best, Tasting Table has a crispy duck recipe that might just become your new favorite.

Asking for someone to choose their favorite dessert may be too tall an order, so we're grateful that in this Food Network video posted on X, Alex Guarnaschelli is asked about her favorite chocolate dessert. Narrowing down the parameters makes the choice a bit easier. Her response is swift: "A perfectly made, without too much baking soda, devil's food cake with chocolate frosting that tastes chocolatey beyond ... and a big mound of unsweetened whipped cream to eat with it."

And that whipped cream is probably not just an afterthought. Devil's food cake is known to be an intensely rich food, especially when topped with a super-chocolatey frosting. A nice, light whipped cream can create an interesting foil to that richness, while keeping it unsweetened makes sure the sugar in the cake doesn't overwhelm the whole experience. If you want to see what that's like for yourself, give Ina Garten's devil's food cake recipe and try and just swap the icing for a chocolate one.

But sometimes, a chocolate cake is just too rich for the occasion. In these situations, Alex Guarnaschelli prefers a yellow cake, and has thankfully shared her favorite recipe, which she says is quite simple. As she says in her Facebook post on the subject, "I honestly love that it takes on any frosting or can even just be topped with summer fruit and sorbet or ice cream." In other words, this is a cake for almost any occasion.

Indeed, this yellow cake recipe will serve you well no matter what frosting you want to use. Chocolate, lemon, vanilla, you name it. Whatever the case, it's always useful to have a classic recipe like this on hand. Quite aside from the simple enjoyment of it, it will make an appropriate option for birthdays, baby showers, dinner parties, and more. And to kick the recipe up a notch, you can even use duck eggs instead of regular eggs to give the cake a better rise and a deeper flavor.

Watermelon is the quintessential summer food for many people, and apparently, it fills that role for Alex Guarnaschelli too. As she told 365 Collective, "There is little more refreshing than watermelon. I love when the sweet juice bumps into the crunchy sea salt. It makes me want to keep eating!" She's talking about smoked sea salt, which in addition to the crunch, puts the watermelon in a whole new perspective.

But in truth, watermelon doesn't need much help in being tasty. If you find a good one, a bite of simple, plain watermelon can ensure you have the best summer ever. For picking out the perfect watermelon, be sure to pick it up and test its weight–the heavier it is, the riper and tastier it's likely to be. In addition, look out for a yellow spot on the side of the melon, as this will also give you an idea of how ripe the melon is–the darker the yellow, the riper the fruit.

In a Facebook post, Alex Guarnaschelli touted her love of soup dumplings, saying, "I love a giant soup dumpling so much." And when love is true, one sentence of praise is all you need. The only problem is that leaves the rest of us slightly in the dark. Does she make these soup dumplings herself? If so, how? Or does she get them from her favorite Chinese spot? If so, where is it, and can we have some too, please?

Whatever the case, if you do come across some good soup dumplings, make sure you eat them properly. Because they are filled with hot liquid, they risk burning your mouth when you bite into them. The way to get around this slight inconvenience is to carefully transfer the soup dumpling onto a spoon (if it's small enough), pierce the dumpling with your chopstick, drink the liquid first, and then turn your attention to the noodle part.

As Alex Guarnaschelli says in a Food Network Facebook post, her breaded chicken Marsala is her favorite chicken recipe. She likes it so much that she even recommends it as a special birthday meal. And to further show her love for this dish, she likens wrapping it up in plastic to the image of tucking your child into bed at night.

Apparently, the secret to its success lies in the marinade, made with umami-rich flavors such as soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and dry marsala wine. And the final touch comes in the form of the breadcrumbs that lightly coat the marinated chicken before it goes into the hot oven. "We're really developing these breadcrumbs and getting a nice toasty quality to this chicken," she explains, so the temperature of the oven needs to be pretty much as high as it goes. But perhaps the best part of this recipe is that it's simple, easy, and approachable even for amateur chefs.

"The Best Thing I Ever Ate" series on the Food Network has revealed a lot of great new foods to us over the years. When it comes to Alex Guarnaschelli, that food is the deep-fried hot dog from Rawley's Drive-In restaurant in Fairfield, Connecticut. What makes these dogs special is that, in addition to being deep-fried (and let's face it, almost everything tastes better when deep-fried), they are also grilled before being served, which gives them an added crunch. While the cooking method gives the hot dog a special texture, the crispy bacon sprinkled on top helps with the flavor, as do the sweet green relish and sauerkraut.

It's lucky that Guarnaschelli has found a hot dog she loves so much, because as she told the Food Network, she can't stand cooking hot dogs herself. But the one at Rawley's is "more, this is way more. This can change your whole life, this hot dog."