Ina Garten Just Made Thanksgiving Dinner a Lot Easier Using Her Favorite Store-Bought Ingredients
Ina Garten prefers to keep Thanksgiving “simple” with a “few fabulous recipes” that guests will love — and she’s not kidding. Instead of making everything from scratch and spending hours in the kitchen, the Food Network star has some menu ideas that feature store-bought ingredients.
Ina Garten makes Thanksgiving dinner a lot easier with store-bought ingredients
Fans of the Barefoot Contessa know that her mantra is “store-bought is fine,” and that includes Thanksgiving desserts. In the week leading up to the holiday, Ina is posting her favorite desserts on Instagram each day. She began with a recipe from her new cookbook Go-To Dinners — Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie.
“Is it already Thanksgiving next week?!! Yikes! This week, I’m posting a favorite Thanksgiving dessert each day, starting with the Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie from my new cookbook GO-TO DINNERS. It’s decadent and delicious and the best part is that it’s actually BETTER made with store-bought pie crust!,” Ina wrote in the caption.
In addition to the frozen pie crust, the recipe also called for store-bought vanilla ice cream and bourbon. The Food Network star shared her pie recipe with The New York Times, and she was challenged to create a holiday menu using store-bought ingredients. Of course, Ina came prepared to make Thanksgiving dinner as easy as possible to save her fans time and stress.
“I think just for Thanksgiving, all bets are off,” Ina told the outlet. “Whatever you need to do to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table is OK.”
The Barefoot Contessa’s recipe for Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie is easy and delicious
To make Ina’s decadent pie, you will need to mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately. It won’t be until the end that you’ll combine them. Just before you put it in the oven to bake, you’ll add the chocolate chips and pecans.
The ingredients that Ina calls for in her recipe include light brown sugar, granulated sugar, all-purpose flour, kosher salt, unsalted butter, extra-large eggs, pure vanilla extract, good bourbon (like Maker’s Mark), semisweet chocolate chips, whole pecans, a store-bought frozen pie crust, and good vanilla ice cream for serving.
The New York Times described the dessert as “a gooey, underbaked chocolate chip cookie” with an “ultrarich filling.” They also praised the store-bought frozen crust as “lighter than a homemade one made with butter.”
The pie only serves six to eight people, so if you have a large Thanksgiving gathering you’ll need to make at least two!
Ina Garten has some store-bought ideas for side dishes
For easy side dishes, the Barefoot Contessa star put together some store-bought Parmesan Mashed Potatoes to save time. After testing many varieties of prepared mashed potatoes, she declared Bob Evans refrigerated potatoes to be the best.
“Mashed potatoes are an essential Thanksgiving side dish but can be time-consuming. Instead of starting with raw potatoes, then peeling, cutting and boiling them, start with these prepared potatoes and no one will know you didn’t make the dish from scratch,” Ina wrote.
For Chunky Cranberry Sauce, Ina says that if you want the texture of fresh cranberries you should start with whole-berry sauce “instead of the canned thing with the rings on it.”
Barefoot Contessa: Go-To Dinners is now available in stores.
