How Ina Garten Makes an Simple One-Ingredient Appetizer

There’s an artwork to internet hosting a cocktail party, getting ready your entire meal, and ensuring your visitors have loads of small bites to snack on throughout the cocktail hour beforehand. You’ll want to discover the fitting steadiness between providing tasty appetizers with out spending a lot time on them that it takes away out of your efforts on the principle course.

To simply handle my time when internet hosting, I usually stick with serving easy bites like olives, roasted nuts, or bread with olive oil and vinegar. Because of cookbook writer, entertaining skilled, and meals icon Ina Garten, I now have two extra one-ingredient appetizer concepts in my again pocket, each that includes one in all my favourite cheeses.

In a throwback clip from her iconic present, Barefoot Contessa, Garten reveals that she additionally prefers to maintain it easy when pairing snacks with drinks earlier than a meal. Two of her go-to choices name for an ingredient you may have already got in your fridge: Parmesan.

Serve a bowl of Parmesan shards

Once you’re quick on time or cash to place collectively a full cheese and charcuterie unfold, go for Ina Garten’s cheese snack of selection: easy chunks of plain Parmesan. The Barefoot Contessa says that “there’s nothing less complicated or chicer than Parmesan shards.”

To create appropriately sized bites, she recommends utilizing the tip of a pointy paring knife to carve out small chunks from a wedge of the aged Italian cheese. She notes that “it’s the tough edges that style actually good. I do not know why, but it surely actually does make a distinction,” so don’t really feel compelled to slice off completely even items.

Garten serves the cheese in a stemmed, silver bowl, however a small ceramic bowl, platter, or picket reducing board would look elegant too. Simply ensure you use actual Parmigiano Reggiano — which can have “Parmigiano Reggiano” stamped in dotted letters on its rind — as a result of this appetizer is all concerning the depth of taste within the cheese.

Make a batch of Parmesan crisps

In case you’re trying to find a fast appetizer concept that feels such as you invested extra effort into it, a batch of Parmesan crisps is likely to be the reply. Garten locations tablespoon-sized mounds of grated Parmesan cheese on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bakes them at 350°F. 

After simply six minutes within the oven, the cheese melts into lacy rounds that change into shatteringly crisp after cooling. They’re simple to select up, satisfyingly crunchy, and, after all, filled with the nutty taste of Parmesan.

As a result of Parmigiano Reggiano is so versatile, it pairs properly with a variety of drinks. Attempt serving a fruity crimson wine, like a Chianti, or a dry, glowing choice, corresponding to Prosecco, to your visitors. Negronis, martinis, espresso martinis, and most traditional cocktails all complement the Parmesan bites.

If cheese by itself sounds too plain to your get together, Garten has one other simple appetizer that also stars Parmigiano Reggiano: the Barefoot Contessa pops a bag of microwave popcorn, then tosses it with melted butter, chipotle chili powder, and grated Parmesan. Whether or not you go for popcorn or a classy shard of cheese, we’re assured your visitors can be pleased.