Ina Garten's Menu Trick That Makes Hosting Dinner Parties A Lot Less Stressful

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Ina Garten's self-bestowed sobriquet may be Barefoot Contessa, but another appropriate nickname might be the Doyenne of Dinner Parties. The star seems to be a never-ending source of advice, menus, and recipes. While some of the recipes she publishes could be considered fairly complex, her menus for entertaining are intended to be simple. For example, Garten won't make a certain dish for dinner parties. She avoids her own seafood stew recipe from her "Barefoot in Paris" cookbook because the bouillabaisse is too time-consuming when hosting. One of her top tips for dinner party simplicity, however, involves having a variety of dishes that all prep differently.

While Garten's menu planning usually starts with the theme, be it the season or a holiday the dinner party is intended to celebrate, she also makes sure to plan for several different types of dishes. She may have one or two items that are cooked in the oven and a few others that are made on the stovetop, with the rest of the food being prepared ahead of time. That way, she says, she's not too stressed out to enjoy the company of her guests.

Back in mid-century America, dinner parties were all about ostentation — showing off for the boss or valued clients, that kind of thing. In more recent years, however, they've become far more casual affairs, and even Ina Garten is onboard with this trend. While we can't quite see her ordering pizza and cracking open a 12-pack and calling it done, her special-occasion menus only run to maybe five or six dishes instead of being the kind of sumptuous multi-course banquets you might associate with an actual contessa.

One of Garten's dinner party menus revolves around a simple dish for which she's well known: roast chicken. Her spring menu features the entree, with salad as a starter, garlic mashed potatoes and parmesan-roasted asparagus as sides, and a raspberry-rhubarb crostata for dessert. As this last-named item can be served at room temperature, it falls into the make-ahead category, while the potatoes and the fried goat cheese medallions that top the salad are prepared on the stove. That leaves the oven for the chicken and asparagus, thus adhering to Garten's menu planning rule.

Perhaps her easiest menus of all, however, are ones where nearly everything can be made in advance, like her "too hot to cook" summer dinner party. The heirloom tomato and blue cheese salad, Israeli vegetable salad, lobster and avocado sandwiches, and coffee chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches can all chill in the fridge (or the freezer, for the dessert) until it's time to serve them. Then, only the non-alcoholic pomegranate spritzers need to be mixed as the guests arrive.