The Comforting Food Ina Garten Always Serves For Lunch

For someone who has tested recipes an intense number of times and written several best-selling cookbooks, Ina Garten has a diverse selection of dishes she can prepare and serve at home for her family and guests. Despite this, the "Barefoot Contessa" star has one meal that she always prepares come lunchtime, and you'll be surprised to learn that it isn't some fancy dish, given her culinary expertise. During a guest appearance on Julia Louis-Dreyfus' podcast "Wiser Than Me," Garten revealed that her lunchtime at home isn't complete without a bowl of homemade soup.

According to the television personality, her daily lunch ritual with her husband, Jeffrey, always involves soup. She even revealed that, on the day of the interview, she and Jeffrey were having Italian wedding soup for lunch. Given the number of soups she's recommended in her cookbooks, however, it's not a stretch to say there's no shortage of options for them to enjoy throughout the month. Garten didn't say how this ritual came to be, but it must be something she and Jeffrey enjoy eating together. Garten's husband once gave a hard pass to one of her dishes, fish stew. So it's possible that she learned from this and stuck with what they both like.

Serving soup for lunch is a wise choice. This liquid dish is beneficial to the body as it is comforting, filling, and loaded with nutrients, especially the recipes with lots of veggies. Studies have also shown that eating soup as a preload meal can help people lower their calorie intake. It's also a clever way to use whatever you already have in the pantry, since soups are very versatile. You can make one using leftover roast chicken, a handful of pasta or rice, and some stray vegetables, and you are good to go.

Ina Garten also has a hack to cut the time it takes to prepare this dish. "I can make a lot of soup and leave it in the freezer," she said on the "Wiser Than Me" podcast, adding that this makes it "so easy" to serve for lunch. If you want to follow her lead, be sure to familiarize yourself with Garten's best tips for making delicious soup, such as making stock from scratch and only using French lentils for lentil soup. This way, you'll always have the best-tasting soup to serve at lunchtime.