‘Barefoot Contessa’ Ina Garten Shares the Kitchen Necessities Everyone Should Own
Ina Garten keeps her kitchen workspace clear of clutter but she does recommend some go-to kitchen necessities she finds are essential for cooking. In a 2020 interview with Domino Design Time, the Barefoot Contessa star was asked what she thinks is an essential pot to have and she went on to name a handful of things she can’t live without.
Ina Garten shared her must-have kitchen items
Garten shared some of her views on kitchen design during the November 2020 Design Time podcast episode, which prompted the interviewer to ask about a kitchen essential the Barefoot Contessa star would recommend.
When the interviewer asked Garten, “What is the essential pot,” the Food Network host came up with a few must-haves that every kitchen needs. “Definitely like a 20-quart stockpot,” she said. “Because I think making chicken stock is like one of the basic building blocks of good cooking.”
She continued, “Sauté pans, because you can make everything from a frittata to sauteed vegetables. And a couple of Le Creuset, if you want to make stews and soups and things like that — I use that a lot. And half sheet pans, I have like a stack of half sheet pans which are really useful.”
The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star explained the perfect kitchen workspace
Garten also shared the elements of a well-designed kitchen, as the interviewer pointed out, “Your kitchen functions so well for entertaining, for filming … did you design that kitchen for television and what elements do you think every kitchen really needs?”
The Barefoot Contessa star revealed that she designed the kitchen for herself and her needs, explaining, “and I figured the TV guys can just work around it. So it works like a good kitchen.”
She continued, “I think people think that they need a big kitchen but, in fact, sometimes too big a kitchen is actually a hindrance because you need roller skates to get around. It’s better to have a kitchen that has enough workspace between the refrigerator, the stove, and the sink.”
Garten then explained how she prefers to keep her workspace out of the way of foot traffic. “One of the really important things I think a lot of kitchens miss is that you want the workspace to be out of the flow of traffic in the house,” she said. “So that, if you need to get from, say, the dining room to the back door, you don’t have to go through the workspace — you can go around it. So that people aren’t underfoot all the time and moving through your space, I like to have that kind of set apart.”
The Barefoot Contessa star explained that many people have “too much equipment” in their kitchen, which becomes cluttered because “you end up piling everything on top of everything else.”
Garten shared how she simplified her kitchen in her Paris home with one set of dishes, one set of silverware, “and just the equipment I need.” According to the Barefoot Contessa star, “I can make absolutely anything in that kitchen… each thing has its own place and there’s nothing piled on top of the other one.”
