Ina Garten Says Cooking Is 'Really Hard,' She Isn't A 'Confident Cook'

Ina Garten is one of the household names in the cooking industry with her plethora of cookbooks and cooking shows. While not having any professional training in the culinary arts, the chef received mentorship from famous chefs like Eli Zabar, Anna Pump, and Martha Stewart.

Before her popular show on Food Network, the Emmy winner had her own gourmet food store called "Barefoot Contessa." She soon started her teaching show "Barefoot Contessa" on the Food Network and, since then, expanded her activities into authoring several successful cookbooks, self-branded convenience products, and magazine columns.

In a recent interview, Garten revealed that despite her accolades, she still had trouble being comfortable in the kitchen. She blamed it on her lack of professional knowledge of the art, especially in times when she had to make an impromptu meal. The 74-year-old also referred to her husband, Jeffrey as her biggest supporter.

Garten was in the online cooking scene for around 20 years and is a household name in the culinary world. Her first cookbook, "The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook," sold over 100,000 copies in its first year, and the chef proceeded to author more cookbooks. Garten soon joined the Food Network and, over time, bagged a number of Emmy awards and nominations for her show.

Despite her obvious success in the culinary arts, the chef revealed that she wasn't as confident as people thought about her meals. In a Page Six interview, Garten revealed that the process was "really hard" for her, and she wasn't the most comfortable when doing it.

"I'm not a comfortable cook," the 74-year-old said. "Cooking is really hard for me. If I'm making dinner for four people, I'm like, 'How's this going to happen?' I really am. I'm really not a confident cook."

According to Garten, one of those uncomfortable moments is when she has to make an impromptu meal. This stems from the fact that she never really had any professional culinary training, so there was no instance of her perfecting a recipe "over and over and over again."

She compared that to a home-cooked meal where the ingredients for a meal could taste different from previous purchases, and "you just have to adjust along the way." "But when you're cooking at home, you know, you go to the store, you get a chicken, and maybe it's a little bigger than the last one you got, or its taste is a little different or the carrots are sweeter, and so you have to adjust along the way. I just find it hard," she said.

Although the tv personality isn't the most confident about her meal, she definitely has a better relationship with drinks. In a Reese Witherspoon post earlier this year, Garten joked that her resolution this year was to drink "more large cosmos" to cope with the seemingly never-ending pandemic.

While this comment seemed harmless enough, one of her mentors, Stewart, told People that the advice wasn't "charming." The chef said, "I do not agree about taking to drink to cope with things like the pandemic." She then went ahead to recommend her own wine brand.

In response, Garten said, "I didn't quite understand. I must have missed something there, right?" She added that the comment was probably misquoted or taken out of context. "You never know what the background is or what was said before," the 74-year-old said. "What was said afterward, whether it was taken out of context. I don't know what it was about, but it was fine. It doesn't matter."

One person that'll always be Garten's biggest cheerleader is her husband, Jeffery. After getting married when Garten was 20, the couple stayed married for 53 years. The author credited him as being the number one taste-tester for all her meals and biggest supporter. Jeffery also did his best to help his wife remain self-assured in her culinary skills.

"Jeffery said if it wasn't hard, I wouldn't think it was interesting," she said. "So that part of it, I like. I like the challenge of it." Garten added that her husband was very supportive of her and that she lucked out marrying him.

She continued, "He's pretty fabulous. He's extraordinary. He's positive and supportive and happy and smart and has the biggest heart of anybody I've ever known. He's just adorable. So, I got really lucky."