From early stars like Emeril Lagasse and Paula Deen to more recent favorites like Giada De Laurentiis and Rachael Ray, here are six Food Network stars who left the network

For many chefs, having a show on the Food Network is a dream, while for others it’s merely a stop on or launching point for their journeys.

After Julia Child popularized the cooking show, Food Network revolutionized the format with an entire channel devoted to cooking TV. The network debuted in 1993 with original chef Emeril Lagasse and quickly added more cooks, including Italian phenomenon Giada De Laurentiis, everyday-cooking extraordinaire Rachael Ray and more.

However, these stars and more all later left the Food Network. They had varying reasons for their exits, from exercising their entrepreneurial spirit like Ray and De Laurentiis to the release of serious allegations like in the case of Paula Deen.

Here are six Food Network stars who left the channel.

01 of 06

Emeril Lagasse

Lagasse was one of the original Food Network stars, debuting as the host of How to Boil Water in 1993 and later hosting long-running staples Essence of Emeril (1994-2007) and Emeril Live (1997-2007). He quickly became known as a master of cajun and creole cuisine and for his signature catchphrases like “kick it up a notch” and “bam!”

In 2007, Food Network aired the last episode of Emeril Live, cancelling the show as Lagasse departed on good terms, even receiving the network’s 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award. Since leaving, he’s written multiple cookbooks, won a 2017 Daytime Emmy for his travel cooking show Eat the World with Emeril Lagasse and hosted Emeril Cooks on Roku from 2022 to 2024.

Lagasse told PEOPLE that his style of educating through food is more aligned with what he does now as opposed to the heavy competition focus on the Food Network of today.

“What you see is what you get. I am what I am,” Lagasse told PEOPLE in 2025. “I enjoy the television aspect because I like to teach. I’m not interested in competition. I’m interested in getting your attention, taking the intimidation out of that and teaching you how to cook, about ingredients, how to shop, how to pair it with wine.”

He also continues to run restaurants in New Orleans and Las Vegas, having also been named Chief Culinary Officer of Carnival Cruise Lines in 2022. Lagasse has been married to his third wife, real estate broker Alden Lovelace, since 2000 and he has four children, including chef E.J. Lagasse.

02 of 06

Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray became known for her quick and easy cooking style after releasing her cookbook 30 Minute Meals, which landed her a contract and her first cooking show of the same name on Food Network in 2001. Ray became a sensation for her personality and cooking style, popularizing phrases like EVOO — short for extra virgin olive oil — and “Oh My Gravy!”

Ray went on to host multiple shows including $40 A Day (2002-2005), Rachael’s Vacation (2008) and the Emmy Award-winning daytime talk show Rachael Ray (2006-2023). When she ended her talk show, she launched her production company Free Food studios, and officially broke from Food Network in 2025.

Since then, she has gone on to host her show Meals in Minutes and her interview-based podcast I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. In 2024, she spoke to PEOPLE about the latter and why she was enjoying her new entrepreneurial path.

“I never had the format on daytime to do long format with people I truly respect and care about,” Ray said. “I like introducing people to new people, people that are new to my life, but I also like reintroducing them to people I already love and respect and being able to expand and expound on what I wish I had the time to do in formats I couldn’t do it in before.”

Ray has been married to John Cusimano since 2005.

03 of 06

Valerie Bertinelli

Prior to joining the Food Network in 2015, Valerie Bertinelli already had a successful career as an actress, known for roles on shows like One Day at a Time (1975-1984) — for which she won two Golden Globe Awards — Touched by an Angel (2001-2003) and Hot in Cleveland (2010-2015).

When she joined the network, Bertinelli launched Home Cooking with Valerie Bertinelli (2015-2023) and was an original host of Kids Baking Championship (2015-2024).

She became known for teaching easy-to-make comfort foods, but in 2023, her home cooking show was cancelled and her contract for Kids Baking Championship wasn’t renewed as the parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (now a part of Skydance Corporation) decided to not renew her overall deal with the network, per Variety.

Bertinelli spoke out against Food Network following their split.

“I fell in love with Food Network two decades ago because of all the amazing ITK (in the kitchen) shows. [Rachael Ray’s] 30 minute meals, Ina, Giada… the list goes on,” Bertinelli wrote on Threads in 2024. “I learned so much. It’s sad it’s not about cooking and learning any longer. Oh well, that’s just business, folks.”

In 2026, Bertinelli launched her subscription-based platform Valerie’s Place, featuring new episodes of Home Cooking with Valerie.

From 1981 to 2007, Bertinelli was married to Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen, with whom she welcomed her famous son Wolfgang Van Halen. She was then married to Tom Vitale from 2011 to 2022.

04 of 06

Paula Deen

Paula Deen began her tenure on Food Network in 2002 with her show Paula’s Home Cooking (2002-2013). The show featured plenty of classic Southern dishes and earned her two more shows: Paula’s Party (2006-2013) and Paula’s Best Dishes (2008-2013).

In 2013, Deen admitted to using racial slurs on numerous occasions after being sued for harassment and racial discrimination by an employee of her restaurant Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. Food Network then announced they were terminating her contract.

Deen still releases cookbooks with her latest being 2023’s Love and Best Dishes and her magazine Cooking with Paula Deen is still in publication. In 2025, documentary filmmaker Billy Corben released Canceled: The Paula Deen story featuring an interview with Deen about how her empire exploded following the scandal.

Deen has been married to Michael Groover since 2004 and she has two children from a previous marriage.

05 of 06

Giada De Laurentiis

After working in restaurants like Wolfgang Puck’s Spago and as a food stylist, Giada De Laurentiis debuted her show Everyday Italian on Food Network in 2003. De Laurentiis found success early as she started hosting shows like Behind the Bash in 2005, Giada’s Getaways (2007-2008) and won an Emmy Award for Everyday Italian in 2008.

She accumulated even more TV credits as a chef on shows like Giada at Home (2008-2015) and Giada Entertains — which earned her another Emmy Award in 2020 — and as a voice actress in Handy Manny (2010), Pixie Hollow Bake Off (2014) and Scooby Doo! and the Gourmet Ghost (2018). In 2023, Di Laurentiis announced she would be leaving Food Network.

She has since tapped into her entrepreneurial side, selling her own brand of pasta, partnering with other companies to sell Italian products and uploading cooking content to her platform Giadzy. When launching her pasta brand in 2023, she told PEOPLE that leaving Food Network felt like a “rebirth in her career.”

“Partnerships have been amazing over the years and I’ve been super lucky, but I haven’t been able to really tell the full story. At the heart of it, I’m a teacher and a storyteller, and when you’re in a partnership with somebody else, you have to make compromises in that storytelling,” De Laurentiis said.

She left Food Network on good terms and still appears occasionally in the channel’s programming and has a multi-year deal with Amazon Studios. She was married to fashion designer Todd Thompson from 2003 to 2015 and often shares updates on their daughter Jade and her boyfriend, TV producer Shane Farley.

06 of 06

Alton Brown

Alton Brown created a unique niche for himself as someone who combined food, science and education in an entertaining fashion with his groundbreaking Food Network show Good Eats (1999-2011, 2019-2021). He also served as a culinary commentator on Iron Chef America for 11 seasons and hosted The Next Iron Chef for five seasons.

Brown’s contract with Food Network expired in 2020 while new episodes of Good Eats ran as both he and Iron Chef moved to Netflix for 2022’s Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend.

“I knew that the show was going to be happening, and I was sick with jealousy over the idea that I was at the wrong network at the wrong time,” Brown told Variety in June 2022. “One day, my agent finally called me up after I had nagged him almost daily, and that was it. It was done. There was never a second thought for me. It meant removing myself from one network, but that was not a hard decision. Timing just worked out that I was able to extricate myself from that.”

In 2025, Brown began hosting a show on his YouTube channel called Alton Brown Cooks Food and in the fall of 2026 he returned for another tour: An Evening of Alton Brown.

He has a daughter with his first wife DeAnna Brown, to whom he was married from 1994 to 2015 before marrying restaurant designer Why 6 Early Food Network Stars Left (or Were Fired by) the Channel Ingram in 2018.

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