Ina Garten's Easy Menu Suggestion For A Stress-Free Dinner Party

Few have the power to quell the anxieties of a fledgling party host better than celebrity chef Ina Garten. Whether she's encouraging you to keep it simple with the party decor or helping you prepare a menu in advance by way of her cookbook, "Make It Ahead," she's full of tips to up your cooking game and keep you calm before your guests arrive.

Likewise, Ina has a message for hosts who fret over executing ambitious dishes with flawless precision: Stick to what you know. "You're better off making something that you know you can nail without too much stress than finding some recipe in a cookbook that you've never used before," she told Food Network. 

Leaning on old, reliable recipes might sound anticlimactic, but at the end of the day, you want to serve your guests something you know will taste delicious. What's more, sticking to familiar dishes will leave you with ample time to prepare the rest of your party (which, if you're Ina, might include building an arrangement of flowers from your garden in East Hampton).

Unless you've been solely devoted to Ina Garten's cookbooks for decades, the dishes you have memorized by heart might be different than the ones the Barefoot Contessa turns to when she's throwing a dinner party. If you need inspiration, however, she's full of easy-yet-elegant recipes for beginner chefs. 

"Whenever I'm planning a dinner menu, I always pick something I can make in advance, something you can put in the oven and forget about it, something that goes on top of the stove, and something that's served at the room temperature, so four things don't have to be hot at the same time," she told Food & Wine in 2019. She nods to a butterflied lemon chicken cooked in a skillet, but you might opt for a classic roasted chicken, a simple sheet-pan fish, or a comforting casserole. Ina also told Food Network that she advises against making too many dishes: "I usually say make two or three and buy the rest — or assemble the rest."

A very important addendum to Ina Garten's "make what you know" rule has to do with outstanding preferences or allergies your guests might have. Catering to the specific cravings of each guest would take away the whimsy of a dinner party and saddle you with extra work, but getting a sense of what your friends strongly dislike (or are allergic to) will help you hash out your menu and, more importantly, avoid an appearance from everyone's least-favorite party crasher, EpiPen. 

Ina is fully on board. The first thing she does when planning a party, as she told Food Network, "is ask everybody what they can't eat or they don't like, and then do a menu based on that." This might mean making a second, edited version of a dish you're already serving. If it turns out that your guests have wildly different tastes, never forget the most reliable and stress-free of all dinner party menus: the potluck.