Rebekah Bean Ripley knew she wasn’t a good cook, but she didn’t think her skills were so subpar that she’d ever serve someone a plate of raw chicken.
But that’s exactly what happened when she made her debut on Food Network’s “Worst Cooks in America.”
The former BYU gymnast, who lives in Mapleton, Utah, had an hour to make a seared chicken dish during the show’s season premiere that aired last month.
With all of the lights, cameras and constant reminders from the show’s hosts that time is ticking, the contestants face a lot of pressure.
Even still, Ripley said, that was no excuse for serving raw chicken to world-class chefs Gabriele Bertaccini and the late Anne Burrell.
“That was just truly shocking to me, because I had no idea it was raw,” Ripley recently told the Deseret News. “That was a moment where I was like, ‘Is this real life? Like, did I actually do that?’ Like, knew I was bad, but I didn’t think I was serve raw chicken bad.”
The moment marked one of the biggest — and most humbling — surprises of her time on the show, which ended Monday night with her elimination.
But it also gave her some validation: She clearly belonged on “Worst Cooks in America.”
Surviving a high stakes cook-off
After the raw chicken fiasco, Ripley found herself on the brink of elimination.
She was in the bottom four, and chefs Burrell and Bertaccini each had just one last spot on their teams.
In a high-stakes cook-off, fighting for a coveted spot, Ripley had 20 minutes to make two tacos.
Before the countdown began, she revealed her strategy to the show’s producers: “Just freaking cook the meat.”
She may have overcompensated — the chefs said her pork tacos were too dry — but her effort was appreciated enough to secure the final spot on Bertaccini’s team.
Over the next couple of weeks, Ripley underwent a culinary boot camp of sorts with her fellow “Worst Cook” contestants as she received instruction and attempted to put together dishes that met the chefs’ satisfaction.
The gymnast advanced through three episodes of the competition before getting eliminated Monday night.
But she improved by leaps and bounds in the kitchen — in the third episode, Bertaccini, an Italian chef, actually praised her pork Milanese dish.
In just a few episodes, she came a long way since her application video — which ended with her husband of five years lamenting the fact that he had to try her breaded chicken.
And, she said, she certainly improved since her days as a competitive gymnast at BYU.
Going viral as a BYU gymnast
Over the years, food has largely been on the back burner for Ripley as she has spent her time and energy on competitive gymnastics.
A big reason she never really learned the art of cooking, she said, is because food has always been more about providing fuel to practice and compete rather than for leisure or enjoyment.
With a rigorous training schedule, she’s never had much time to experiment in the kitchen. She essentially has three meals on rotation — bagels, salads and quesadillas are her go-tos.
As a gymnast at Brigham Young University, where she balanced practices, schoolwork and competing, Ripley suffered a series of setbacks that all required surgery — including two ACL injuries and a third knee injury, per KSL.
The injuries threw wrench after wrench in her collegiate career, and it wasn’t until her senior year that she finally got her shining moment.
At the start of 2023 — nearly four years since her first ACL tear back in 2019 — Ripley returned to the world of competitive gymnastics with a Barbie-themed floor routine.
Although the moment marked a major comeback for the gymnast — she said she was so nervous she thought she was going to throw up — she didn’t believe it to be her best performance.
But by the time she got home from the meet, ESPN had posted her routine, she said. And so had a number of other outlets.
To date, Ripley estimates that her viral floor routine racked up anywhere from 80 to 100 million views across all platforms.
“That’s definitely a moment that I’ll never forget, because it was just so rewarding,” she said. “So many years of working hard and not seeing results, and then I finally got them. It felt like all of these years of hardship and working through injuries had finally paid off.”
The national attention from the Barbie-inspired floor routine gave Ripley a greater presence on social media — one that likely attracted the attention of a casting producer from the Food Network.
Ripley, who graduated from BYU in 2023, is now using her platform to coach gymnasts on overcoming mental roadblocks in the sport.
The discipline she developed competing in a sport like gymnastics — and overcoming all of her injuries at BYU — she said, came in handy on “Worst Cooks in America.”
‘It’s really fun to be a beginner again’
Ripley was able to show off her acrobatic moves while competing on “Worst Cooks” — during one episode she actually walked across the floor on her hands and presented a dish to Bertaccini with her feet.
The gymnast has always loved performing and being in front of a camera. And although skills from gymnastics — like focus and time management — worked to her advantage on the Food Network show, she said was still a little nervous because it was all completely new to her.
But she made fast friends with her competitors and the producers, and found that learning from renowned chefs and mentors like Bertaccini and Burrell (who died in June, a month before the Season 29 premiere) was a “really, really great environment to work in.”
“It’s really fun to be a beginner again at things — I haven’t been a beginner at something in so long," Ripley said. “I’ve been doing gymnastics, the same sport, for my whole life ... so it’s really fun to move into a new space where I’m a beginner again, and to just be comfortable being uncomfortable.
“You could look at situations like this and be scared,” she continued. “Or you could say, ‘Oh, this is so fun. How exciting I get to be a newbie.’”
‘You do have to be bad at cooking’
With her elimination, Ripley is no longer in the running for the show’s $25,000 prize.
But she said she is still leaving the set with a big win.
“I was so, so, so excited to learn how to cook,” she said. “That was like my No. 1 thing. I got to be on a TV show, I got to learn how to cook and I got a bunch of friends. It was just awesome.”
And, by virtue of making it through the first few episodes, Ripley has also taken some pride in knowing that at least she’s not the “worst cook in America.”
But, she readily admitted, there’s definitely an abundance of room for growth.
“You do have to be bad at cooking,” she said of being on the show. “If you’re not bad at cooking, then you’re cheating.”