Ina Garten: Pasta So Good It ‘Will Solve All Your Problems’

Everyone loves Barefoot Contessa, and the delicious home-cooked meals star of the show Ina Garten prepares for her viewers. Garten has shared several recipes that her fans have tried and rated highly, such as her Beattys Chocolate cake, Brownie pudding, Garlic Roasted Potatoes, and many more.

She recently shared her recipe for the perfect weeknight pasta dinner, which she claims will erase a bad day and solve all her fans’ problems. This simple recipe combines pancetta, pasta, and vegetables which she turns into one delicious dish and tops with a sprinkle of parmesan and some ricotta cheese.

Here are all the details of this recipe, some tips that Garten shared that can make this pasta dinner easier, and everything the Barefoot Contessa star had to say about this delicious meal.

Garten revealed her pasta recipe and demonstrated how to make it on an episode of Barefoot Contessa. She said, “Shells with broccoli rabe and pancetta is one of those pasta dishes with big flavor. And the first one is the broccoli rabe.”

She began by briefly cooking the vegetables and explaining her steps. “What I did was I chopped it up in big pieces and blanched it for two minutes,” Garten explained. “You don’t want to overcook it, otherwise it’s going to get too soggy, and it turns brown.”

She spoke more about the type of vegetable she used and said, “This is a really classic Italian vegetable. And strangely, isn’t even related to broccoli but it’s got great flavor, a little bit more bitter.”

While she made the pasta dinner, Garten shared some tips and cooking wisdom with her viewers. She said, “And here’s the trick in this dish- I’m going to save the water, and I’m going to cook the pasta in exactly the same water.”

She then poured the pasta shells into the water and allowed them to cook for about 10 minutes. While doing this, she said, “I’m using shells for this dish because I love that the pancetta and the broccoli rabe get caught in that little opening in the shells. It’s a great pasta for this.”

After this, Garten moved on to the pancetta. “And the key to this is I don’t actually ask the butcher to slice it because they always slice it too thin,” she explained, “And I want a quarter-inch dice, which means it has to be a quarter inch thick. So I just do it myself.”

After she was done dicing the pancetta, Garten used a sauté pan to cook it, and then she added minced garlic to the pan and advised her viewers to let it cook “just until you can smell it.” She also warned that they should be careful not to let it burn and then added a bit of hot red pepper while saying, “Remember, I said this isn’t boring.”

Garten then added the broccoli rabe back to the saute pan and used a strainer to remove all the shells and add them to the pan. She also advised that her viewers allow some of the water to get into the dish as the starch is a big help in thickening the sauce.

With this, she was finally done and then added her last bit of cooking tips. She explained that if her viewers felt that the meal was too dry, they could add more pasta water or season it further with salt and pepper.

She said, “Seasoning is so important. You can have the most delicious pasta dish but if it doesn’t have enough seasoning, it’s really boring. It makes all the difference in the world.”

Once she had heated the pasta dish, Garten served some into a big bowl and noted that “It’s one thing and it’s got everything you need for dinner in it- vegetables, pasta, pancetta.”

She also added some parmesan cheese and a scoop of fresh ricotta to the plate while saying, “And then as you eat it, you can just blend it all together. Kind of that hot and cold thing.”

She concluded with, “And that is what I would call a weeknight dinner. It’s really satisfying, it’s really comforting. Bad day at the office? This will solve all your problems.”

After taking a bite of the pasta, she immediately praised it and said, “It’s so good. It’s got so much flavor.” The full recipe for the pasta dinner can be found on the Food Network website.