10 Favorite Ina Garten Recipes | Alexandra's Kitchen (2024)

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10 Favorite Ina Garten Recipes | Alexandra's Kitchen? ›

Barefoot Contessa Foolproof (2012)

In particular, Foolproof was the number-one cookbook in the country the year it came out, selling nearly half a million copies, and it's still top-rated by fans, on both Amazon (4.7 out of 5 stars) and Goodreads (4.27 out of 5 stars).

Barefoot Contessa Foolproof (2012)

In particular, Foolproof was the number-one cookbook in the country the year it came out, selling nearly half a million copies, and it's still top-rated by fans, on both Amazon (4.7 out of 5 stars) and Goodreads (4.27 out of 5 stars).

For over 20 years, Ina Garten has shared her comforting and foolproof recipes with the world through her beloved cookbooks and "Barefoot Contessa" show. But before becoming a Food Network star, Garten wrote budgets at the White House and ran a Hamptons grocery store.

In 1996, after two decades of operating Barefoot Contessa, Garten again found herself seeking a change; she sold the store to two employees, Amy Forst and Parker Hodges. She retained ownership of the building itself.

Garten ran the Barefoot Contessa store for 18 years — eventually moving it from Westhampton Beach to a bigger location in East Hampton — before she sold it to two of her employees in 1996. Three years later, Garten published her first cookbook with recipes from her store. Then, Food Network came calling.

For twenty years, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything has been the definitive guide to simple home cooking. This new edition has been completely revised for today's cooks while retaining Bittman's trademark minimalist style—easy-to-follow recipes and variations, and tons of ideas and inspiration.

Six years, five months and three days. That's how long it took to cook every single one of Ina Garten's 1,272 recipes from her books and television show.

Garten, who married husband Jeffrey nearly 55 years ago when she was 20 years old, said that her own childhood is the main reason why she didn't want to expand her family. “I'm actually writing a memoir right now and it's kind of looking back at my childhood. It was nothing I wanted to recreate,” she shared.

One of those places was Washington, D.C., where Garten worked as a budget analyst for presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Ina Garten once worked in the White House and worked her way up, which eventually put her in charge of writing the nuclear budget for the United States. She also managed to earn her MBA from George Washington University at the same time. Despite her success, she decided she wanted a different life.

What white dishes does Ina Garten use? ›

She writes, "They both have a huge range of white china. For example, my large serving bowls are Crate and Barrel brand, and my Pillivuyt and Apilco dishes are from Williams-Sonoma."

In addition to quick oatmeal, Ina Garten has also been known, on occasion, to use her microwave for simplifying what are usually more complicated cooking techniques. For example, she uses her microwave to not only melt butter but make clarified butter, in which the milk solids have been removed.

How many Barefoot Contessa books are there? As of 2023, there are 13 Barefoot Contessa cookbooks that have sold millions of copies worldwide.

1978: Shortly after her 30th birthday, Garten quit her government position and bought the small Barefoot Contessa shop in East Hampton, New York.

Barefoot Contessa hasn't produced new episodes since 2021, and anyone who still has cable knows that Food Network doesn't show Garten's TV shows as often as we'd like. However, Garten recently announced that she's working on new episodes for the cooking network.

Garten then decided to discontinue her studies at Syracuse University and focused on cooking for her husband. However, Jeffrey pushed her to pursue her passions for business and cooking, and she later earned her degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.