Kitchen ineptitude at its finest

As a chef and teacher on “Worst Cooks in America,” Anne Burrell always says that “if you like what happens in your kitchen, then that’s great.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. Or safe.

Season 6 of the Food Network series begins tonight, bringing with it more astonishingly inept and sometimes dangerously deluded home chefs. Burrell and newcomer Tyler Florence are there to show them the error of their ways – and hopefully correct them.

One was the woman whose approach to making a microwaved baked potato left Burrell dumbfounded.

“She took a potato, washed it and left it wet, and then put it in a plastic grocery bag, put it in the microwave with a little bit of butter in there for like two minutes, only, and made sure that the letters were facing up on the bag – that was part of her rules,” Burrell says. “And I asked her why, and she was like, ‘Well, so the letters won’t go on the potato or on the microwave.’ And she microwaved it for two minutes. I said, ‘Why only two minutes?’ And she was like, ‘Well, because the butter was melted so it was done.’ So the potato was completely raw.”

The reactions of her co-stars, Burrell says, are priceless.

“When I did it with Bobby Flay for the first time,” she says, “he looked at me and he was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And as soon as they started cooking this time, Tyler said, ‘Oh my God! Where has this show been all my life? … This is like cooking in Bellevue.’”

Q&A

What book are you currently reading?

“‘As Always, Julia.’ It’s actually letters from Julia (Child) that she has written over the course of her life, about her friendships and that kind of stuff.”

What did you have for dinner last night?

“I got home really late from a shoot I was doing and was freezing and so starving, so I just warmed up takeout Chinese food that was in my fridge. … It was some chicken and broccoli and rice.”

What is your next project?

“For 2015, I would really like to get a restaurant off the ground. I have had that idea for a couple of years now, but this is the year I really want to do it. And I did a pilot for Cooking Channel, so I’m hoping to hear any day if that’s going to get picked up … . And have just got a few Food Network things lined up to do. But I’m ready to sink my teeth into like a big, big project.”

When was the last vacation, where and why?

“Turks & Caicos, and that was in October. … I did it right before I started to shoot ‘Worst Cooks’ and I did it to just kind of go away and have a quiet and head-clearing space for a couple of days, and it very much did that.”