Ina Garten knows a little thing or two about food. Her recipes are simple and delicious, her breezy Hamptons aesthetic is aspirational and her daily habits? Well, let’s just say she’s got a lot on her plate. So she streamlines where she can.
Sometimes, this means making a bunch of soup at once and freezing it to enjoy with Jeffrey later. She prefers to go out to eat or over to friends’ homes for dinner after a long day of testing recipes. But no matter what the rest of her day looks like, she always starts it with the exact same meal.
What does Ina Garten eat for breakfast every day?
If you think that the Barefoot Contessa is part of the celebrity oatmeal club, you’re wrong! Well, you’re half wrong. It’s true, much like Willie Nelson, Kate Middleton and Giada di Laurentiis, Ina used to start her day with oatmeal. Specifically, McCann’s Irish quick-cooking oatmeal. But after doing that for more than a decade, she changed her tune.
In fact, her time spent in Paris might have something to do with the switch-up. Ina actually bought an apartment in Paris and spends a lot of time in the City of Lights. It’s where she found her new obsession that made its way into her morning routine: fancy French butter.
“It’s called Beurre de Baratte with flaked sea salt. And it’s just so delicious,” she told Julia Louis-Dreyfus on an episode of the podcast Wiser Than Me. This really is the crème de la crème of butters—imagine a dairy product that “eats like cheese but tastes like butter,” as one food writer put it.
So with this fancy butter in her rotation, Ina has switched from a hearty oatmeal breakfast to a lighter fare. “I pretty much have toast and coffee for breakfast,” she also said on the podcast. “And then at exactly 10: 30, I have to have a cup of tea with a little honey in it.”
I gotta say, Ina is pretty much living my ideal life. And while I can’t quite afford the Paris apartment, I can definitely splurge on some fancy butter and a g