Ina Garten Spills Her Secrets About the Store-Bought Items She Will Never Make From Scratch
Ina Garten really means it when she says that sometimes “store-bought is fine.” The self-taught cook insists that not everything has to be made from scratch. She even says there are certain things that are so good from the store she has “no idea” why someone would attempt to make it on their own.
Ina Garten’s latest cookbook was influenced by the pandemic
The Food Network star’s new cookbook Go-To Dinners is filled with recipes that are definite crowd-pleasers. Garten explained during her appearance on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? that “Go-To” recipes are the kind that you want to make over and over again because they always work.
She noted that her cooking philosophy changed while writing this latest book because of the pandemic. While talking to people on social media and trying to help them with their home cooking, she was also busy writing her book and cooking three meals a day for her and her husband, Jeffrey.
“I thought ‘this is crazy. It’s just exhausting. And I’m gonna have to simplify it.’ And what I realized is every once in a while, I’d make an omelet and grilled piece of bread, and we’d have fruit for dessert — and it was just so simple and satisfying,” Garten said.
“So there’s a whole section in this book on breakfast for dinner, and then there’s lunch for dinner. There’s soups, like really hearty soups, like white bean soup.”
The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star spills her secrets about what she never makes from scratch
It’s been more than 20 years since Garten released her first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa. She says that her mantra “store-bought is fine” is truer now more than ever because there are some pretty fantastic ingredients in the market that you should buy instead of making yourself.
“One of the things that’s happened is that there’s some ingredients in the market. Like, I don’t understand why anybody would want to make a vanilla ice cream. This is perfectly good vanilla ice cream,” Garten told Wallace, to which he replied, “Nobody wants to make vanilla.”
“Exactly. People still do, but I don’t. And, and there are great baguettes, there’s great bread in the marketplace that they didn’t have 25 years ago. So I just like to concentrate on the stuff that you can’t get — like a good roast chicken. You can’t buy good roast chicken in the market. If it comes out of the oven, it makes the house smell good. It’s a whole different experience. So those are the things I like to concentrate on.”
Ina Garten has a stuffing hack using a store-bought mix
Garten also revealed that one of her favorite things to do lately is to make bread pudding instead of stuffing for a chicken or turkey. But, instead of cutting up the bread and toasting it so that it absorbs the pudding mix, she buys Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix.
“I put it in there with mushrooms and green onions, and I have to tell you, nobody knows that the stuffing mix is in there. But it’s so much easier. And so why not?” Garten explained.
The Barefoot Contessa airs weekly on the Food Network.
