Rachel Farnsworth is a best-selling cookbook author and is the culinary powerhouse and founder of The Stay At Home Chef. Her focus is simple: creating restaurant-quality meals that everyone can enjoy at home whether they are a beginning cook or an experienced pro. She believes in keeping her recipes accessible, using everyday ingredients to ensure anyone can whip up delicious meals right at home.
This philosophy has not only resonated with her followers, but it has also allowed her audience to expand significantly over the years. The Stay At Home Chef has a combined following of more than 12 million fans across our social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok, and more.
Despite her success, Rachel never strays from her roots. You can often spot her cooking barefoot in videos from the comfort of her own home, just like you. Her culinary creations have made their way onto the menus of restaurants and bakeries worldwide, and she’s also a twice-published cookbook author with 6 best seller designations. In addition, she has collaborated with some of the world’s top food and kitchenware brands like Meyer Corporation, Walmart, Disney, McCormick and Kraft.
In addition to her public persona as a celebrity chef, she is also considered a social media expert and has been a popular speaker at VidSummit, CVX Live, Everything Food Conference, Social Media Marketing World, and more. She’s also been a guest speaker on podcasts and has consulted for the largest social media platforms in the world. Rumor has it, you can even find her videos playing in the cafeteria at Google’s Main Campus.
Behind the scenes, Rachel also dedicates significant amounts of time to helping other food creators. She is grateful for those who have helped her out in her journey and seeks to pay it forward. One of her proudest accomplishments is creating and leading a group of over 800 creators who truly embody their slogan of “rising tides lift all boats.” In a world of competition and jealousy, they’ve built a community of trust, transparency, and genuine support for each other.
Rachel is deeply married to the love of her life, Stephen, and together they have two children. They live in Utah, just south of Salt Lake City.
At The Stay At Home Chef, Rachel shares her recipes, insights, and easy-to-follow video tutorials—all free of charge. Her goal is to inspire confidence in home cooks. With Rachel’s guidance, you can cook anything. Our community may be large, but there’s always room for one more at the table.
Rachel’s Health
In 2016, Rachel made a video as a project for YouTube’s Next Up While she never intended to share the video, her fellow Next Up award winners encouraged her to do so. It immediately went viral with hundreds of millions of views. She says that if she had known how popular it would be, she would have showered that day! The video resonated with so many people that nearly a decade later, she still receives daily emails from people who resonated with her message. It was, and still is, an international sensation covered by BBC, Daily Mail, Today, Huffington Post, Us Weekly, ABC News, Yahoo, and more.
Rachel was diagnosed with Addison’s disease in 2011 when she was pregnant with her second child and nearly died as they tried to figure out what it was. She was left permanently disabled. As she tried to adjust to living life with a chronic illness, she poured her soul into food as her creative outlet. She had been sharing her recipes online since 2008 under Rach’s Kitchen. In 2012, she decided to make it her full-time work to prove to herself that she could still contribute to the world in a meaningful way not in spite of her disability, but to spite it. And thus The Stay At Home Chef was born.
Millions of people around the world have been following Rachel’s story and she shares periodic updates about her health on Facebook and Instagram stories.
She is currently in the process of receiving a new additional diagnosis after developing strange new symptoms in 2018 with what she described as “my legs sometimes stop working.” By 2019 she was an ambulatory wheelchair user. In investigating what could be causing this, she discovered she had a brain tumor in the fall of 2020 which she lovingly named Fred.
The problems became increasingly worse. She lost the ability to digest food in 2021, experiencing extreme nausea on a daily basis. By the end of 2022, her hands lost function to the point where she could no longer hold a knife safely to cook. She lost the ability to swallow properly in 2023, limiting her diet to soft and pureed foods. She was rapidly losing weight and was facing a feeding tube. Her little sister, an ICU nurse, recognized the struggle and found Mom’s Meals which helped her regain control of her eating. She shared a live reaction to trying the meals for the first time where she broke into tears of joy. As it turns out, many of her followers knew someone who also needed pureed foods. So many people ordered it overloaded their production for nearly two months!
Rachel has visited with specialists of all kinds including Western medicine, holistic practitioners, functional medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, and naturopaths–all to no avail.
In 2024, she is finally receiving a diagnosis to explain what is happening to her. She has a preliminary diagnosis and has started preemptive treatment. Once the diagnosis is official, she will be sharing it with the world. Until then, she is working closely with her medical team to complete highly specialized testing to determine the exact diagnosis and her prognosis. While there is no cure and no way to stop the progression, the treatment is alleviating much of her suffering.
A chef who can’t digest, can’t cook, and can’t swallow. What a tragedy! Despite the overwhelming adversity, Rachel’s motto is “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” and she truly embodies it. Somehow she is still sharing her love of food with millions of people around the world.
Occasionally, she can even be spotted zooming around on her “Rig” from her dear friend Zack who is the compassionate and generous soul behind Not A Wheelchair, an organization that is solely dedicated to providing affordable wheelchair solutions. As the walls of the world close in on her, she’s eternally grateful for a device that allows her access to nature. She donated her original Rig to the Ozark Adaptive Sports Association so that anyone who wants to can take it for a spin on the extensive adaptive mountain bike trails that have been built in Bentonville Arkansas. There’s nothing else like it in the world! And yes, that means YOU can take it for a ride as well. All you have to do is ask them.
I’ll be here sharing the journey and my passionate love affair with food for the rest of my life. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop my friends. Sharing recipes with you has been the honor and privilege of a lifetime.
Rachel Farnsworth
