The 3 Freezer Staples Ina Garten Always Keeps On Hand

Food Network icon Ina Garten has no shortage of neat tips and tricks up her sleeve. From ways to elevate store bought mashed potatoes to tips to make perfect muffins or choosing the right chocolate for baking, she has been a pillar of knowledge for the culinary community for good reason. Even the items she chooses to keep stocked in her own home have a logic and reasoning to them.

Everyone has their own definition of food staples, but when it comes to Ina Garten's freezer, she explained her must-have items to Food & Wine: vodka, vanilla ice cream, and bread. Vodka is often kept in the freezer, but Garten chooses bread and vanilla ice cream specifically due to how well they hold up in the freezer and how good they can taste.

Garten can absolutely make her own vanilla ice cream and bread, but like any other human being, sometimes she does not have time to make a homemade version. This is precisely why she likes to keep vanilla ice cream and bread handy in the freezer. Both of these products, as well as vodka, will keep well at such cold temperatures and can be easily pulled out in an emergency with little to no consequence on flavor.

Vodka and vanilla ice cream can go into the freezer as is. However, bread is a little trickier. Rather than storing an entire bread loaf in the freezer in its store bought packaging, Ina Garten has yet another trick up her sleeve.

When storing bread in the freezer, Ina Garten recommends cutting the bread into wedges. She then wraps bread wedges tightly before storing them in the freezer. Cutting the bread down into smaller pieces and wrapping them helps minimize how exposed the bread can be inside the freezer, thus maximizing how well preserved its flavor and texture is.

Of course, these three items are not the only things Garten likes to keep in her freezer. Although these other items do not quite make her list of freezer essentials, Garten says that soup and a bottle of good French Champagne are often kept in her freezer too.