Ina Garten’s #1 Entertaining Hack Makes Me Want to Host More Dinner Parties

Dinner parties are fun, but they can be stressful for the host. I only speak for myself, but I find that no matter how much advance planning I do, there is always a last-minute scramble to get food on the table.

Whether it’s ensuring that all dishes finish cooking simultaneously or are served at the proper temperature, with the right garnishes, sauces, and finishing touches, inevitably I find myself dashing around the kitchen, fretting about timing and presentation. And even though my guests never seem to notice or care (they’re just delighted someone else is cooking for them), I dislike the feeling of being frazzled and disorganized. I always vow after the fact to do things differently next time, somehow to crack the “effortless entertaining” code. But how?

How to Make Dinner Party Entertaining Easy and Stress-Free

It appears that celebrity cook and entertainer extraordinaire Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa, has come to my rescue with a piece of potentially life-changing advice. In an interview with our friends at Food & Wine, she explained her own “four-dish” strategy for smooth and easy entertaining. 

She said, “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.”

In other words, she selects a make-ahead dish, an oven-baked dish, a stovetop dish, and a room-temperature dish. It’s simple and brilliant. It means that a host only has to focus actively on the dish that’s cooking on top of the stove in those final few minutes leading up to mealtime. Two are presumably already finished (make-ahead and room temperature), and the oven item can be pulled out whenever the stove top item no longer requires full attention.

Garten suggests recipes such as butterfly lemon chicken, which she says “you put it in the oven and forget about it. It's beyond delicious,” or slow-roasted beef tenderloin, which she says “comes out perfectly every time.” (She has said this is her favorite holiday food.)  A good make-ahead dessert is salted caramel panna cotta, which can be prepared a day in advance and never fails to please a crowd. Or use her genius store-bought shortcut dessert for even less prep work.

Most importantly, Garten’s four-dish strategy helps the host to feel relaxed, which leads to greater enjoyment of the meal overall—and this, she says, is what she wants to see wherever she goes to eat: “I think the most important thing at a dinner party is that the host is having fun. If they are wise enough to make a meal that can do without having a meltdown, I think that’s really impressive.”

With her advice, I might just be able to attain that elusive status of “wise, meltdown-free dinner host,” but it might take some practice. At least now I know how to strategize for success.