The Common Canned Food Ina Garten Will Not Buy
Canned soup is one of the foods you'll never find in Ina Garten's kitchen. The Barefoot Contessa sat down with "TODAY" for a speed-round of "store-bought or homemade" and laid out what foods should be created with your own two hands, as opposed to those which were quicker or more sensible to buy at the supermarket. While Garten showed no disdain for any of the store-bought products suggested — impressive, considering her tremendous culinary pedigree — only the suggestion of canned soup got a laugh from her. "No," she said decisively, with a shake of her head, when asked if she would buy it (via TODAY).
When it comes to soup, Garten insists that the kind you concoct at home is the best. While you can always upgrade canned soup with a Parmesan rind, the furthest that Garten is willing to stray from her own stockpot is soup made by a local place such as a delicatessen. Like lemonade, jam, and chicken stock, canned soup is something that Garten prefers to make for herself.
The store-bought foods that Ina Garten actually likes
On the other hand, Garten does endorse a few pre-made foods, usually on the basis that it's too much work to make them at home and that the grocery store version does just fine. She applies this logic to puff pastry (which is notoriously finicky), ketchup, and mayonnaise. Garten also likes Julia Child's favorite brand of mayo: Hellmann's. Store-bought pure vanilla extract also wins Garten's seal of approval, even though she usually makes her own. She also specifically gives a pass to Rao's marinara, despite her opinion that the home-cooked stuff is a superior choice.
If we were culinary legends like Ina Garten, we might also just prefer to cook every single thing in our kitchens from scratch. But for regular foodies, skill level and budget likely dictate that we strike a balance between items that we feel good about making from scratch and the dishes and condiments that we're more comfortable letting the pros handle. One thing is for sure, however: We just might side-eye that can of chicken noodle before tossing it in our shopping cart on the next grocery run.