Celebrity chef and author Ina Garten has spent decades refining her philosophy on home cooking, arriving at a core principle that simple ingredients often triumph over elaborate techniques. That philosophy is on full display in her latest cookbook, “Simply Ina,” which was released on Tuesday.
Building on her famous mantra that store-bought ingredients can sometimes suffice, Garten tested a wide variety of commercial products to find the best options for her readers. Her testing regimen was rigorous, extending even to prepackaged mashed potatoes. After evaluating everything from boxed flakes to refrigerated prepared brands, Garten selected Bob Evans refrigerated mashed potatoes as the winner, incorporating them into a potato-leek soup recipe featured in the new book. Other convenience items make appearances as well, including Rao’s marinara sauce used in a skillet pasta recipe.
According to Garten, these commercial ingredients serve a specific purpose: they cut down on preparation time and help jump-start a dish. Rather than using them entirely on their own, she often enhances them with quality additions, such as slowly cooked garlic and half-and-half stirred into prepackaged potatoes. As the holiday season approaches, she also suggests utilizing other shortcuts, like pairing homemade fillings with store-bought pie crusts, such as for pecan pies, allowing home cooks to spend less time in the kitchen and more time with their families.
However, there is one category of convenience product that Garten found entirely unusable during her recipe testing: prepackaged baking mixes. No matter how much she experimented, she could not overcome their distinct flavor and texture profiles. She noted that baking mixes consistently retain an unmistakable manufactured taste that cannot be masked, even by incorporating high-end ingredients like pure vanilla extract or premium chocolate. Consequently, home cooks hoping to recreate her baked goods will need to prepare her cakes entirely from scratch.
This practical approach represents an evolution from Garten’s early days in the kitchen. When she first taught herself to cook using Julia Child’s foundational French cookbook, she believed that exceptional meals required complicated techniques and extensive preparation lists. Years of experience, however, convinced her that the best food is often the most straightforward. Garten contrasted her approach with modern cooking trends visible on social media, where videos often feature a piling-on of numerous ingredients to generate intense flavors. While such heavily embellished dishes might appear sophisticated, Garten argued that they ultimately create confusion, comparing good food to a well-tailored dress that requires no excessive ruffles or bows to look remarkable.
