Celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli shares her best cooking hacks and favorite recipes

• Alex Guarnaschelli is a celebrity chef who's known for judging shows like "Chopped."
• She told Insider about her favorite recipes, vegan substitutions, and time-saving cooking hacks.
• The chef is currently partnering with ZENB, a plant-based food brand.

Chef Alex Guarnaschelli really does it all, from working as the executive chef at Butter in New York City to starring and judging on multiple Food Network programs, including "Chopped."

During a Zoom interview on Thursday, Guarnaschelli made her secrets to success pretty clear: simple ingredients and passion.

Her go-to recipes are full of simple, fresh ingredients, and now she's teamed up with plant-based pasta brand ZENB, which seeks to inspire sustainable change in the food industry.

Chef Guarnaschelli spoke to Insider about her partnership with the brand and her love of simple, flavorful dishes.

Read on to learn more about her favorite recipes, best cooking hacks for home chefs, and more.

Insider: I'm going to jump right in, so first I wanted to start with where you kind of drew your inspiration for your three ZENB pasta-dish recipes.

Alex Guarnaschelli: I'm obviously no stranger to pasta since I'm Italian-American and I've worked in restaurants for 30 years.

When I started my partnership with ZENB, they sent me the pasta and said, "Cook it! Eat it!" They left me alone with the product, which was really great.

First I ended up rolling it in a little butter and herbs, just because that's a big childhood dish for me.

With my parents, it was kind of a latchkey situation. They were both working so I often had a bowl of buttered noodles for dinner - and that ended up being the first recipe in the partnership.

The second dish was inspired by how the pasta's made from one ingredient - yellow peas. I paired the pasta with rutabaga because it is sweet and earthy. I also added sage because the combo takes me to Thanksgiving and January.

For the third recipe, I tried to think of a more spring and summer dish so I went for cut-up cherry tomatoes and clams.

You only cook this convenient pasta for six to eight minutes. It's in the box, you take it out, put it in the water, take it out, put it in the sauce, and you're happy.

Based on that, what are some of your favorite healthier-ingredient swaps when you're wanting to up the nutritional value of a meal?

In a lot of places where I use heavy cream, I've used a scoop of sour cream instead to be lighter.

A big swap for me is potatoes, though. If I'm making mashed potatoes or a gratin and I want to cheat and make it a little lighter, a big sub of mine is a few sliced turnips, or a few thin slices of celery root, or sunchokes sliced up and mixed in so that there are fewer potatoes and more varied vegetables that are a little less starchy and have more vitamins.

If you want to go deeper, instead of having candied yams or baked potatoes, you just do candied rutabaga or a turnip-and-Brussels-sprout gratin instead of potatoes.

So it can either be lightening an ingredient a little bit or just straight-up saying, "Potatoes, we'll see you another night."

Do you have suggestions for more plant-based dishes or how to add more protein to produce-heavy meals?

I'm really a closet vegetarian, so I really relate to your question.

Chickpeas, white beans, black beans, lentils, are enormous sources of protein, and I think you can really twist them into a million different things, which is why I like them.

With a mixed-bean chili, I think if you fold some crunchy croutons into it, it gives it more texture so that you're not like, "This chili is actually baby food, and I know there's no meat in it and I want chili with beef in it."

Or you can take the ZENB penne, cook it super al dente, chop it up, and stir that into a bean chili, - it gives it that tooth that meaty chili has.

I'm also really into vegetable steaks right now. I just take a cabbage, remove the ends, cut it in half, and roast the two steaks in the oven until they are tender.

Then I maybe put a little vinaigrette for acidity on them and then I'll throw some protein on top of that, some white beans, kidney beans, braised lentils, barley, or farro.

Nuts are another thing where I'd chop up some walnuts and throw that in the bean chili at the last minute. It gives it the creaminess, like dairy, and it gives it the texture of meat.

I would love to know some of your favorite, go-to recipes if you just want something quick. What are the staples in your house?

For me, an easy recipe is something that requires light prep work, but then I might throw it in the oven or the slow cooker for a while.

One of my favorites is I have a cauliflower-steak recipe online that I made in one of Bobby Flay's Thanksgiving specials a few years ago, and I serve it in my restaurant.

I call it my "accidentally vegan entrée," and it's basically cauliflower that's blanched, soaked in coconut milk, and then roasted.

It's got that kind of "What did I just eat?" vibe. And you could throw chopped walnuts, beans, or sunflower seeds, on top of it for crunch and more protein.

Out of my cookbooks, I love my skillet cornbread.

Read more: I made cornbread using 5 celebrity chefs' recipes, and there's only one I wouldn't eat again

I want to revisit pasta. What are some of your go-to tricks for upgrading a simple pasta dish?

If you have a big tomato or some cherry tomatoes that are in the fridge that are kind of looking back at you like, "Hello? You said you'd eat me, you bought me, and you didn't," but you don't have enough to make tomato sauce, I would just blister them and chop them up in a little hot oil.

Add a splash of the pasta-cooking water and a pinch of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese - or chopped up walnuts or a dollop of Dijon mustard if you're not using dairy - to thicken it and add body. Add a dash of balsamic.

Just cook the pasta and throw it in that. Sometimes I cook pasta one minute less, which gives me one minute to just cook it on the stovetop in the sauce.

No matter what sauce you're making, make it more flavorful by binding the pasta and the sauce a minute longer so they get to know each other before you eat them together.

Any herb and a lemon can really make a great pasta dish.

If you're looking at dairy-free, a spoonful of that pasta water in a little pan with a few cloves of garlic cooked in olive oil, a lot of lemon zest, and either a pinch of ground-up almonds that are really toasted or a cheese substitute. Then toss the hot pasta in that, so good.

We want a little body, we want the sauce we make to coat the pasta, and those are good ways to get there.

A dollop of butter or sour cream is also awesome to add to pasta.

You can melt a container of sour cream in a pan gently and throw anything in there: some spices, chopped-up herbs, grated lemon zest, lime zest, shrimp, nuts. Then add the hot pasta right in. So delicious, so good, so easy.

Let me tell you, a box of pasta tossed in warmed sour cream with lemon zest and lots of cracked black pepper and salt? Oh my.

I know we're running out of time here, do you have any last words or cooking tips?

When I go out of my way to get vegetables that make me feel like I'm contributing somewhat to the concept of biodiversity in my own eating and cooking and on a large-scale, like for the restaurant, I feel like I'm making a difference and an impact.

In my partnership with ZENB, they speak to me in that same way. If I'm going to get behind a pasta, I'm going to have to believe it for myself. And they spent so much time and energy making sure that I understood their position about the larger picture.

It wasn't just pumping me with ideas about the pasta, it went beyond that. I like that.

To learn more about Guarnaschelli's partnership with ZENB and enter for a chance to win a one-on-one virtual cooking class with her, visit ZENB.com/ChefAlex. Official rules can be found at go.zenb.com/chefalexsweepsrules.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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