Ina Garten's Favorite Kitchen Tools (Including The One She's Kept For Nearly 60 Years)

Seasoned home cooks know that a kitchen is truly nothing without a suite of reliable tools and trusty gadgets. The most basic equipment will keep your plates spinning before any meal, but the real time-savers come in clutch when you're cutting it close. And your everyday accessories don't have to be anything fancy to get the job done — just look at celebrity chef Ina Garten. The Barefoot Contessa's kitchen is packed with handy appliances and utensils that have lasted her ages.

In Garten's new memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens," the Food Network star turns the clock back to the late 1960s — the early days of her marriage — and talks about a tool she's held onto for decades. "I was enamored of anything Scandinavian — Marimekko, Dansk," she writes. "I actually still have a spatula from our first kitchen."

Of course, Garten's kitchen in East Hampton, New York, is stocked these days with more than just a half-century-old spatula. Many of her favorite gadgets are just a few clicks away online, from oven thermometers to indispensable dutch ovens.

In a 2020 video for The New York Times Cooking, Ina Garten takes us on a tour of her barn kitchen where she works and ensures viewers who might be intimidated by her resplendent supplies, "I don't have a lot of fancy equipment; I have just things that anybody else would have in their kitchen." And it's true: The real workhorses of Garten's kitchen are readily available gadgets, like this OXO Good Grips Food Scale.

Garten shows off the OXO scale in the video, and it also appears on other lists of Barefoot Contessa faves, so we're convinced it's the real deal. This stainless steel scale can handle up to 11 pounds and even has a pull-out display so you're not craning your neck trying to see the readout under bowls and platters. Reviewers say the backlit screen and zeroing feature (that allows you to weigh items in containers more easily) are nice perks.

Ina Garten told Bon Appétit in 2017 that she swears by a good rasp. They're great for getting some zest from citrus fruits to punch up anything from salad dressings to cocktails. Of course, you can also use a rasp to grate cheese, which will help the fresh mixture on your homemade nachos melt even better. Garten says she even uses it to grate garlic because the resulting shavings are so fine.

Ironically, the niche kitchen tool wasn't initially intended for cooking but for woodworking. To combat slow sales, it was marketed as a culinary gadget and took off from there. Created by Microplane, which has now become synonymous with the implement, the family-run company still makes the most popular graters on Amazon. The super-useful Classic Zester comes in tons of different colors, is made with surgical-grade stainless steel, and can be cleaned in the dishwasher.

Le Creuset is a magic word in many kitchens and for good reason. The French-Belgian maker of cast-iron cookware produces its highly sought-after enameled pots and pans in seemingly infinite colorways, ensuring that your kitchen doesn't lose its style in a sea of chrome and black.

Naturally, like Julia Child before her, the Barefoot Contessa adores her Le Creuset pots — specifically the company's dutch ovens. This 5.5-quart dutch oven on Amazon in classic red is definitely pricey, but with overwhelmingly positive reviews and a pedigree for a lifetime of durability, it certainly seems worth the plunge.

If you don't think you need one, let's get real. You can make all sorts of stuff in a dutch oven, from the obvious, like soups and stews, to fluffy homemade bread, roast chicken, and juicy beef for savory birria. It's one of those staples of a good home kitchen because it can make just about anything.

Another brand that Ina Garten has made a fixture in her kitchen is Wüsthof. The German knife-maker has been sharpening steel for more than two centuries, and the high price point for a full set of its famous knives seems to reflect that legacy. But if you want just one thing from Wüsthof, its 8-inch chef's knife has been touted by Garten as an essential kitchen tool. She's vouched for the brand numerous times, and it shows up on many online lists of the chef's favorite things.

So, why buy just a single knife? Well, a chef's knife is its own unique kind of blade with a wide range of utilities. It's arguably the star of the kitchen, and it's up for nearly any task — from slicing and dicing to chopping and smashing. It's your trusty steed, your magic wand. But, we beg of you, don't put it in the dishwasher.

The last item here is one that Ina Garten explicitly recommends in her video with The New York Times: a Taylor brand oven thermometer. To the Barefoot Contessa, you can never be too sure what temp the oven's at — "No matter what it says on the dial," she warns viewers, "the oven itself could be totally different." There are a lot of options on Amazon, but this large 3.25-inch dial Taylor thermometer looks like a fun, sturdy one to keep in your kitchen.

It certainly makes sense why Garten would want to be extra sure of the temperature when using the oven. Baking can be an exact science and a delicate art at the same time, and experts have told The Takeout that an oven thermometer is absolutely essential, especially if you're making a cake and it just keeps falling when you take it out.