Rachael Ray reveals her New York City horror stories – including fighting a teenage mugger, biting off her ex’s thumb, and throwing his finger out a window

She makes bad sauce – and fights thieves and jealous friends, too.

Before she became famous, Rachael Ray was robbed — twice — by a teenage boy outside her apartment in Woodside, Queens.

“He literally had a Glock in his hand and stuck it in my back, and I was screaming out loud. “I think they heard it in Jersey…I was freaked out by that flip, and I think I scared him more than it scared me,” she told The Post after the premiere of her new show on A&E. “Rachael Ray’s meals in minutes.”

“I sprayed him in the face with mace and he wasn’t happy. I still feel bad about it actually. I don’t think that kid would have hurt me.”

At the time, Ray, now 55, was working at Agata & Valentina, a gourmet Italian market on the Upper East Side.

On the night she was robbed, she left work around 11 p.m. and headed to her c**kroach-infested home in Queens.

“There were c**kroaches in my apartment, but I stayed because I was very worried about the dog that lived there,” she said.

Ray was concerned about Super Dog, Lisa, who was chained up in the laundry room.

She often brought food to the puppy, which probably saved her life when the thief returned a few days later.

“The kid came back to steal from me again because he was angry,” Rae explained via Zoom from her East Village apartment.

“He pushed me into this little alley, and Lisa ran down the hall towards him and scared him away. He was terrified of the dog.”

Rae also had to get over a jealous Brazilian boyfriend around this time.

“He was very nice, very kind, very funny, wonderful…and not an ambitious person. “He loved weed and the couch,” she said. “I literally opened the window and threw his head out into the street. I was just fed up.”

But he came back angry because another man had accompanied Ray to his house.

“I hear what I think is thunder. It wasn’t thunder. He was pulling the fire escape ladder and crawling up the side of the building and then he jumped through my living room window.

“We had a real fight…I bit his thumb and blood went everywhere. It was bad. I felt really terrible about it because I really loved him so much.”

Rae, who has been married to lawyer and musician John Cusimano since 2005, said there is no bad blood with her ex-husband.

“He still texts me to this day,” she said of her ex. “Every now and then he sends me videos of whales and children playing and scenes from Brazil, which is very beautiful. He asks about my mother, brother and sister. I usually respond politely.”

After her boyfriend drama and robberies, Rae moves out of New York City and returns to her hometown of Glens Falls in upstate New York.

“I bought a used Ford Ranger… a pickup truck. I had to learn how to drive… I started my life over, and I worked wherever they would let me.

At one of her jobs, at a specialty food market in Albany called Cowan & Lobel, Ray started teaching her “30-minute meals” — and the rest is food history.

The Emmy winner hosted her own daytime talk show “Rachael Ray” from 2006 to 2023, and spoke pa*sionately about her celebrity guests — many of whom were actually sk**led chefs who “had gotten their hands dirty.”

“Oh, a lot, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson. . . Really great chefs. . . President Clinton, John McCain, two incredible people, and I’ve been told and instructed by people who represent some of these people, “They’re not going to do this.” “They won’t do that.” She said yes.

“I mean, Gwyneth was eating out of the pan with her hand.”