The best celebrity chef recipes we made this year, ranked

We’ve been whipping up celebrity chefs’ recipes all year — these were our favourites.

• Throughout 2020, we’ve tested and eaten dozens of celebrity chef recipes.
• We tried Martha Stewart’s cappuccino eggs hack and made Massimo Bottura’s grilled cheese sandwich.
• We also whipped up pastas by Gordon Ramsay and Ina Garten, and tried the “Barefoot Contessa” star’s favourite cosmopolitan.
• These eight recipes, ranked in ascending order of how much we loved them, reigned supreme.
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Ina Garten’s turkey breast recipe was good, but it didn’t top our list of favourites — the part we loved most was the wet rub.

Ina Garten’s herb-roasted turkey breast.

The Barefoot Contessa’s recipe for herb-roasted turkey breast was good, but the star of the dish was actually the herby wet rub rather than the turkey itself.

We made the turkey breast for a miniature Thanksgiving feast and thought it would be perfect for any last-minute dinner. Pulling the rub together was easy and only required eight ingredients (plus salt and pepper).

The rub turned out to be the star of this recipe because we were able to use it as a dipping sauce for the turkey and sauté greens in it for extra flavour.

Read more about Rachel’s experience making Garten’s turkey breast here.

We tried Martha Stewart’s cappuccino eggs hack, and it gave us the best omelette we’ve ever had.

Martha Stewart’s cappuccino omelette.

When we interviewed Stewart back in March, she casually mentioned that she makes her scrambled eggs in a cappuccino machine.

We decided to try Stewart’s hack on both omelettes and scrambled eggs. And, after a few trial runs, we got some incredible results.

We discovered that putting milk in a Nespresso frother and then mixing it with eggs made a huge difference. The eggs immediately puffed up in the pan, and it was by far the fluffiest omelette we’ve ever had.

Read more about Anneta’s experience making Stewart’s cappuccino eggs here.

And we loved Stewart’s grilled cheese so much that she also took the sixth spot.

Martha Stewart’s grown-up grilled cheese.

Martha Stewart’s grilled cheese recipe hit the spot in both the flavour and nostalgia departments.

The lifestyle guru leaves plenty of room for home cooks to get creative with the mix-ins while providing enough structure to help guide you through the process.

The sweet and savoury versions were both delicious, gooey, and left us wanting more.

Read more about Rachel’s experience making Stewart’s grilled cheese here.

Garten’s five-cheese penne pasta was one of the most comforting dishes we made all year.

Ina Garten’s five-cheese penne pasta.

When times get tough (and boy did they get tough this year), we firmly believe that you can make things feel a little better with some cheese. And Ina Garten’s five-cheese penne has a lot of it.

Garten’s recipe includes Pecorino Romano, Italian fontina, Italian Gorgonzola, fresh mozzarella, and ricotta. After you prep the cheeses, the dish is ready in less than 20 minutes.

The pasta came out looking almost golden, a sign of great things to come. Garten’s five-cheese penne is rich and soothing, but doesn’t feel too heavy on the stomach.

Read more about Anneta’s experience making Garten’s five-cheese penne pasta here.

Garten also stole our hearts — and the fourth spot on our list — with her delicious (and immediately iconic) 9 a.m. cosmopolitan.

Ina Garten’s 9 a.m. cosmopolitan.

It all started with an Instagram clip that showed the “Barefoot Contessa” star pouring herself a huge drink before noon and declaring “it’s always cocktail hour in a crisis!”

The rest, as they say, was history.

The delicious bright-pink drink just needs four ingredients – vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and lime – and tastes super refreshing.

We had so much fun making Garten’s cosmo that we continued to learn new cocktails in lockdown, along with many of her other foolproof recipes.

Read more about Anneta’s experience making Garten’s favourite cosmopolitan here.

Gordon Ramsay’s velvety scrambled eggs nabbed third place.

Gordon Ramsay’s scrambled eggs.

The “MasterChef” judge has an iconic scrambled eggs recipe that many have tried to tackle.

After pitting Ramsay’s recipe against nine other cooking methods, we thought it was by far the best. Ramsay’s eggs are velvety in texture and rich in flavour. They even turned Rachel, a soft-scramble sceptic, into a fan for life.

Read more about Rachel’s experience making Ramsay’s scrambled eggs here.

And Ramsay’s 15-minute gourmet pasta was a close runner-up.

Gordon Ramsay’s tagliatelle with sausage-meat bolognese.

Gordon Ramsay’s tagliatelle with sausage-meat bolognese is one of the easiest dishes we made all year – and one of the most delicious.

The simple recipe includes just a few main ingredients, adding tomatoes, garlic, and parsley with the tagliatelle and sausages.

Ramsay’s pasta is the perfect dish to make after a long day of work, and the rich sauce reminded us of the bolognese from our favourite Italian restaurant in New York.

Read more about Anneta’s experience making Ramsay’s tagliatelle with sausage-meat bolognese here.

In the top spot was Massimo Bottura’s grilled cheese.

Massimo Bottura’s ‘Kitchen Quarantine’ grilled cheese.

Back in March, Michelin-starred chef Bottura began sharing his family dinners and cooking adventures while on lockdown in Italy. We learned about his makeshift grilled cheese recipe through the Instagram Live segments he titled “Kitchen Quarantine.”

The world-renowned chef made a five-ingredient cheese sandwich as part of a refrigerator-emptying meal.

Between the gooey, oozing cheese and the saltiness of the prosciutto, this was easily the best grilled cheese recipe we’ve made from a celebrity chef.

Read more about Rachel’s experience making Bottura’s grilled cheese here.