The 51 Best Ina Garten Recipes of All Time (2024)

FAQs

Was Ina Garten a White House chef? ›

Garten was originally employed by the Federal Power Commission and later at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Ina Garten Quotes

You can be miserable before you have a cookie and you can be miserable after you eat a cookie but you can't be miserable while you are eating a cookie. Food is about nurturing: not only physical but also emotional nurturing.

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.

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.

Garten is Jewish by birth and heritage, as is her husband, but rarely refers to her religion and ethnicity, though they are showcased through the inclusion of classic Jewish cooking in her television show and cookbooks, when she makes such dishes as rugelach, challah, and brisket.

He is the Dean Emeritus at the Yale School of Management

Jeffrey Garten. Currently, Jeffrey serves as the Dean Emeritus at the Yale School of Management and teaches courses on the global economy.

“The former owner is Italian and her family called her the Barefoot Contessa when she was young," Ina wrote. After buying the shop on a whim (with no cooking, food, or business experience, Ina decided to leave behind a job at the White House), she was inspired to keep the name.

Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics is the essential Ina Garten cookbook, focusing on the techniques behind her elegant food and easy entertaining style, and offering nearly a hundred brand-new recipes that will become trusted favorites.

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.

How rich is Ina Garten? ›

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Ina Garten's net worth in 2024 is estimated at $60 million. When combined with that of her husband Jeffrey, that amount is estimated at a whopping $120 million.

"I've had the same thing for breakfast every single day for ten years: coffee and McCann's quick-cooking Irish oatmeal," Garten told Bon Appétit in a 2017 article. And her love of the stuff is well-documented.

Garten likes milk in her Dallis Bros.

Dallis Brothers must be good coffee to get Garten's seal of approval. And when it comes to how the cookbook author takes her daily brew, she confessed that depending on her mood, it could either be an espresso day or a traditional pot of coffee.

But it is a surprising move for Ramsay considering he's spoken out against microwaves in the past. "Ugh, I mean, microwaves are for lazy cooks," Ramsay told Insider reporter Rachel Askinasi in December 2020, adding that no machine can replicate "the texture and the searing and the contrast" cooking on a pan creates.

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

I worked in the White House from 1974 to 1978 during the Ford and Carter administrations. I worked in the Office of Management and Budget on nuclear energy issues. It was very exciting for the first few years because your work was going directly to the President.

Ina Garten

In 1978, I was working in the White House Office of Management and Budget and thinking, I've got to do something more creative and fun than writing nuclear energy budgets! I came across an ad in the New York Times for a specialty food store for sale in the Hamptons and I decided to investigate.

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.