Stop being an armchair chef. Sitting there watching hour after hour of food porn on Food Network isn’t good for you. You’ll grow hair on your spatula. It’s time to put all that virtual training to use. But don’t worry, you don’t have to go it on your own. You can take your favorite food celebrities with you into the kitchen.

You see, fame and glory are only part of a celeb chef’s trappings. You haven’t arrived as a culinary star until at the least you have a book deal, if not a fleet of kitchen products bearing your brand.

Take, for example, the media juggernaut that is Rachael Ray.  Seems like just yesterday our little Ray-Ray was using her homey, small-town charm to show us how to feed ourselves in under half an hour or for less than 40 bucks; today, she’s got a talk show, a magazine, at least one comprehensive fan blog and can still turn out a meal in under 30 minutes. But her sprawling influence has extended into products as well. Of course she has her own EVOO (that’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil if you’ve never seen her; if you have, you obviously know that already), no doubt as pert and perky as herself. CawfeeHowse wears her Rayness with pride, sporting a YUM-O tee shirt.

Food Network’s other cutie chef, Giada de Laurentiis, hasn’t yet jumped on the product bandwagon, but if you like her straightforward approach to fresh Italian food, you gotta stock up on her cookbooks. The book from her show, Everyday Italian, is bursting with simple, easy recipes that will make your friends believe you were raised by an Italian mamma.

But if Italian is what you want, you gotta go with big, bad Batali. Molto Mario is more than a pretty face; he is esteemed as one of the greatest Italian chefs in the world. Anita lists the cookbook from his flagship New York restaurant, Babbo, among her go-to books. “Set aside an afternoon for prep (and maybe a morning for shopping, while you’re at it), and you’ll be cooking up dishes that will make your Nonna weep with happiness.” Batali’s endorsed products offer substance with their style, too. Citymapshandclaps likes the ease of use of his fetching measuring bowls. And like his enamelized cookware (including the very covetable panini grill and press), they come in appealing Tuscan colors.

Although he is one of the biggest celebrity chefs around these days, Anthony Bourdain is no longer on the Food Network. (No doubt he’d rip my freakin’ arms off for even mentioning the association, given his vitriolic rant on the channel’s personalities.) Bourdain looks down his nose at the trappings of the star chef lifestyle; you won’t find a bowl, knife or foodstuff with his name emblazoned on it. No, Bourdain’s greatest asset is what’s between his ears, and you can feast at the bounty of his mental offal in his books. Kitchen Confidential put him on the map, a gritty expose of just what goes on behind that double-hinged door. His most recent volume, The Nasty Bits, collects his culinary experiences both delicious and distasteful while globetrotting for his current show.

Ready to turn off the tube and get cooking? See more of my Be a Food Network Star list at ThisNext.