Ina Garten's Simple Must-Haves For Her Freezer

Ina Garten, most popularly known as a television chef personality, is considerably a legend within the food, cooking and entertaining spaces. If you've had the chance to watch an episode from any of the 28 seasons of her cooking show "The Barefoot Contessa," then you're more than familiar with the fact that many are themed around elegant, yet easy recipes to serve while entertaining a crowd of guests or of course, her lovely husband Jeffrey. 

Ina has obviously proven she is more than capable of cooking everything and anything from scratch, but as she would often exemplify to her show's viewers, even she swears by using certain kitchen tools and buying store-bought ingredients to create shortcuts while cooking. One of her favorite hacks is a well-stocked freezer of simple products: bread, vanilla ice cream and vodka. Ina Garten fans everywhere can just hear her famously saying, "store-bought is just fine!"

Among her three freezer staples, assumably the least shocking but most understandable is ice cream since its a product already found, kept and enjoyed frozen. In many episodes of The Barefoot Contessa, Ina would happily reach for a pint of high-quality vanilla ice cream from her freezer to delicately land a rounded scoop on top of whatever dessert she was demonstrating to make. There was even a time she created her own make-shift crème anglaise by melting store-bought ice cream to just the right consistency before drizzling it over a brioche bread pudding.

Now, bread in the freezer is a practice everyone should get behind! The best way to preserve a beautiful, crusty loaf of bread is by freezing it and Ina's method is revolutionary. She first slices the loaf into thick wedges before wrapping it all up tightly in a resealable freezer bag. Freezing the loaf in individual slices allows you to take out just what you need for a dish and continue to preserve the other slices for another time. Bonus points for placing wax paper between the slices in order to prevent them from sticking together once frozen.

Although some cocktail connoisseurs would never advise storing vodka in the freezer, Ina on the other hand proves it to be handy in some cases. Since liquor doesn't freeze solid, the idea of storing it in the freezer allows for not only the alcohol to be preserved, but it also mutes certain flavors of the alcohol, which may be a preference in creating a smoother-sipping cocktail. Alternatively, Ina once made homemade vanilla extract on her show, which required a whole lot of vodka for soaking and storing vanilla bean pods in — genius! Move over, frozen vegetables and here we come vanilla ice cream, bread and vodka!