I made an entire Thanksgiving dinner using only Ina Garten recipes — most dishes were delicious and cheap to make

• I made a Thanksgiving feast using only Ina Garten’s recipes. Most were easy and affordable.
• I made turkey, green beans, stuffing, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, pie, and cranberry sauce.
• After 10 hours of cooking, the meal for 12 was beautiful and filled with delicious highlights.

When I first became interested in cooking, I spent a lot of time watching Ina Garten on Food Network and diving into her cookbooks and recipes.

To me, Garten is one of the greats — so when I decided to cook an early Thanksgiving dinner for friends, it was a no-brainer that I’d put together a menu full of “Barefoot Contessa” recipes.

Like Garten, I kept things simple and elegant, choosing classics like roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

Although I’ve been cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family for over 15 years, I learned new tricks and found recipes I would definitely make again.

Here’s what it was like to cook a full-on Garten-giving.

All the ingredients were surprisingly easy to find.

Still, since I was following recipes from a pro, I thought I’d probably have to go to four or five different grocery stores or specialty shops to gather all of the ingredients.

However, my grocery list was actually simple with lots of easy-for-me-to-acquire items like fresh green beans, elbow macaroni, tomatoes, and goat cheese.

To my surprise, I found all the things I needed at Walmart on a single trip.

I started cooking the day before and knocked out the apple pie first.

Garten’s deep-dish apple pie was to be our dessert, so I made it a day in advance to save time later.

The recipe called for a lot of citrus zest, but it was simple to get the amount I needed from oranges and lemons using my microplane grater.

I’m pretty die-hard about following recipes, but I cheated a little on this one by using a store-bought pie crust rather than making my own. I was glad I did, as making the pie was still a lot of work.

Next up was the cranberry sauce.

I prepped Garten’s make-ahead cranberry sauce the day before, too.

I’ve made cranberry sauce from scratch before, but I prefer the canned variety, so I was curious how Garten’s would stack up.

The recipe called for tart Granny Smith apples and lots of citrus zest, which required a lot of grating and chopping.

Garten puts goat cheese in her mashed potatoes, which I’d never tried before.

Day one of cooking also involved making Garten’s goat-cheese mashed potatoes.

Since the mashed-potato recipe was full of creamy butter and milk, adding goat cheese seemed odd to me, but who am I to argue with Ina?

I prepped the entire recipe ahead of the big day — whipping my potatoes with a hand mixer, loading the cheesy mixture into a baking pan, and then topping it with butter and Parmesan.

Her stuffing was also easy for me to make in advance.

Garten’s sausage-and-herb stuffing was next on my to-do list. I also prepped this a day in advance.

It was easy to brown the sausage, cook down ingredients like apples and onions, and mix everything together in a pan with toasted bread pieces.

Using the straightforward, simple recipe, the stuffing came together easily and was a breeze to make.

The tomato-topped mac and cheese also felt unique.

My kids would riot if mac and cheese wasn’t part of our Thanksgiving meal, so I chose a recipe with a tomato topping to mix up our usual side.

In addition to topping the Gruyere-and-cheddar-based mac and cheese with fresh tomatoes, the recipe also called for a fresh breadcrumb topping.

I’d never made fresh breadcrumbs before, but I quickly learned it’s easy. I just put slices of bread into a food processor and pulsed.

With my first day of prep work complete, I enlisted the help of my favorite Thanksgiving hack.

One of my favorite ways to keep things organized while cooking a big meal like this is to cover each pre-assembled dish with aluminum foil and write the cooking time and temperature on top with a permanent marker.

That way, when it’s time to cook, I can easily see what needs to go into the oven and for how long. I won’t have to search for the recipes again to find the information.

On the big day, I started by making the green beans.

Garten’s green-beans gremolata recipe is a big jump from my normal casserole, but I was excited to try a fresher, less creamy approach to the vegetable side.

Like a lot of Garten’s Thanksgiving recipes, the gremolata calls for lots of citrus zest. I also needed ingredients like pine nuts, fresh herbs, and Parmesan.

After blanching the green beans and placing them in an ice bath, I set them aside until they were ready to be sautéed and tossed with the gremolata just before serving.

The last item I had to prep was the bird itself.

In recent years, my husband and I have spatchcocked our turkey, a technique where you open the bird up, remove the backbone, and lay it flat for cooking. It can help the bird cook more quickly.

We were hesitant to try Garten’s oven-roast turkey, as it was a way more traditional approach.

After prepping the bird and stuffing it with garlic, herbs, onion, and lemon, we popped it into the oven and hoped for the best.

When everything was cooked and ready, I was really proud of the meal I’d created.

Although Garten’s Thanksgiving dinner didn’t look like my normal one, it was stunning when everything came out of the oven and was laid out on my kitchen island.

Everything looked delicious and elegant. I immediately thought it was one of the most beautiful meals I’d made in my life.

I spent about 10 hours in the kitchen in total prepping our Thanksgiving menu, and when I saw everything put together, I knew the time was well worth it.

The turkey turned out beautifully, but I’d probably stick with spatchcocking.

Garten’s oven-roast turkey was beautiful and looked like something out of a Thanksgiving movie.

Still, I find the spatchcocking method allows for better planning when it comes to cooking time. With the bird laid flat, I think it’s easier to predict how long it’ll take to reach the correct internal temperature.

The cranberry sauce was a little fancy for my taste.

I’m still a canned cranberry sauce girl through and through.

Garten’s recipe was the most involved cranberry sauce I’ve ever made from scratch, with its citrus zest and chopped apples. It took a lot of work to make, and I don’t feel it was worth it.

It tasted a bit tart, and in the future, I’d stick with the canned stuff.

Although I’ll stick with my casserole for Thanksgiving, I’d make Garten’s green beans again.

I’m a big fan of traditional green-bean casserole made with cream-of-mushroom soup and crispy onions.

Garten’s green-beans gremolata was a different dish entirely — fresh and citrusy instead of creamy and full of umami. Still, it was delicious.

I’d definitely make the side again, just not for Thanksgiving.

Garten’s tomato-topped mac and cheese reminded us of grilled cheese and tomato soup.

I wasn’t totally sure about topping mac and cheese with fresh tomatoes, but it turned out to be a great idea.

The homemade breadcrumbs and elbow macaroni provided enough carbs that, when combined with cheese and tomato, they gave everyone at my dinner table grilled-cheese-and-tomato-soup vibes.

The goat cheese in the mashed potatoes changed the flavors of a classic dish.

I loved Garten’s mashed potatoes, but adding an ingredient as creamy and tangy as goat cheese really changed their flavor profile.

These were not your classic mashed potatoes. Instead, they were a more creamy mash with pungent notes from the goat cheese.

Although they didn’t scream “Thanksgiving” to me, I’d make them again as a side dish for a different meal.

Garten’s stuffing converted me into a stuffing girl.

I’ve never been into stuffing, as it’s always seemed to lack flavor and take up valuable real estate in my stomach that I’d rather fill with the aforementioned green-bean casserole.

Garten’s stuffing recipe, however, made me a convert.

The savoriness of the sausage and herbs combined with the tartness of the apples was perfection. I also loved the freshly-made toasted cubes of bread we’d prepped the day before.

The deep-dish apple pie was a huge hit with my guests.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed Garten’s deep-dish apple pie, so much so that it was the only menu item we didn’t have leftovers of.

Between the crispy crust and tart apples, the pie was the perfect balance of sweet and tangy. We served each slice with a scoop of vanilla-bean ice cream, the perfect accompaniment.

All in all, I’m still proud of the meal I created.

Going on a 10-hour adventure through some of Garten’s most iconic recipes was a lot of fun. Looking back, I’m still proud of my hard work and the beautiful menu I served my guests as a result.

At the time, I spent $132.77 on ingredients, which felt like a solid deal considering I was able to feed a dozen people — and had leftovers. My usual Thanksgiving meals typically cost me a bit more to prepare.

It was a lot of work, but I found some great recipes I plan to make again throughout the year or for our next holiday feast.

This story was originally published on November 9, 2023, and most recently updated on November 14, 2025.

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