Best Ina Garten breakfast, dinner, dessert recipes I made this year (2024)

• I love testing Ina Garten's recipes, and I made over a dozen new ones this year.
• I was a huge fan of her breakfast dishes, including scrambled eggs cacio e pepe.
• Garten's Greek orzo salad and outrageous brownies were also among my favorites.

Ina Garten is my favorite celebrity chef, and every year I set out to learn new dishes from her extensive repertoire.

In 2023, I dove through "Go-To Dinners," her most recent cookbook, and explored some of her earliest recipes.

While I loved almost everything I tried — like her weeknight pasta and watermelon cosmo — these are the five dishes I know I'll be making again and again in 2024.

I'm a huge fan of Garten's breakfast recipes and pasta dishes, so I was excited when I found out she had combined the two in her "Go-To Dinners" cookbook.

"Eggs are always my go-to breakfast for dinner because they're substantial without being heavy, but I like to dress them up, like adding spicy Italian pecorino cheese and pepper," Garten writes in the recipe description. "Just take your time with the cooking and you'll serve the most delicious scrambled eggs ever."

The recipe only requires four main ingredients: eggs, whole milk, unsalted butter, and freshly grated Italian pecorino cheese. How easy is that?

As someone who frequently eats scrambled eggs for dinner, this recipe felt like it was made for me. The extra hit of salt and cheese from the pecorino helped elevate the eggs, and the texture tasted silky and satisfying.

If you're eating Garten's scrambled eggs cacio e pepe for breakfast, I recommend pairing them with a fruity jam to help cut through the salt and add a bit of sweetness to your morning.

Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's cacio e pepe scrambled eggs here.

I found Garten's recipe for banana sour cream pancakes in her "Family Style" cookbook.

"I spent a full weekend testing pancake recipes, but they all tasted pretty much the same to me: good, but not exciting," Garten writes in the description. "Finally, I made these with sour cream, bananas, and vanilla and — served with bananas and maple syrup — they were a hit."

Garten's husband Jeffrey — whom she's been married to for 55 years — is also a huge fan of these pancakes, which include lemon zest, butter, vanilla extract, and sugar.

Pancakes aren't usually my go-to brunch order, but Garten's recipe really won me over. The sour cream helped plump up the pancakes, which tasted fluffy and buttery. The slight tang added more depth to the overall flavor, and the pancakes were very moist.

Plus, aren't these golden pancakes just gorgeous? This is sure to impress your family, friends, or that special someone when you're making breakfast on the weekend.

Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's banana sour cream pancakes here.

Garten shared the recipe for her blueberry-ricotta breakfast cake — which also appears in "Go-To Dinners" — on Instagram in honor of Mother's Day earlier this year.

"Let mom sleep in while you bake her my Blueberry Ricotta Breakfast Cake. It's so easy to make — and who wouldn't love cake for breakfast?!!!" Garten wrote in the post.

The recipe features fresh blueberries, whole-milk ricotta cheese, sour cream, vanilla extract, lemon zest, and powdered sugar.

My mom gave Garten's recipe a 10/10, and it's easy to see why. The golden cake looks really impressive, and the flavor is so delicious.

The ricotta and sour cream both add tons of moisture, and I loved the slight sweetness from the blueberries. It's a light dessert everyone will enjoy, especially in the spring and summer months.

Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's blueberry-ricotta breakfast cake here.

My parents have taught me how to make a number of delicious Greek dishes (including pastit*io and baklava), so I was excited to show them this Greek orzo salad recipe from "Go-To Dinners."

The dish features orzo, canned chickpeas, baby arugula, Greek feta cheese, red bell pepper, red onion, Kalamata olives, capers, dill, and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

My whole family was a huge fan of Garten's Greek orzo salad, and we all made it multiple times this year. My mom loved the recipe so much that she even declared, "Ina must've been Greek in one of her previous lives."

The recipe highlights all the best flavors of Mediterranean cuisine, with the orzo slick with rich olive oil soaking up the salty feta, briny olives, and burst of lemon juice. I made dozens of dishes this year, but Garten's Greek orzo salad was easily one of my favorites.

Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's Greek orzo salad here.

I've made several of Garten's delicious desserts (I've even ranked them!), but I usually try her cakes. One Sunday night, I wanted to make something a bit easier, so I decided to whip up her brownies instead.

Garten's outrageous brownies appear in her first cookbook, "The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook," which featured recipes that Garten made at her Barefoot Contessa store in the Hamptons before she became a celebrity chef.

Garten writes in the recipe description that her outrageous brownies were the most popular dish at the store, and she sold "like a thousand" a week.

The recipe features semisweet chocolate chips, bitter chocolate, walnuts, instant-coffee granules, and pure vanilla extract.

Chocolate lovers will rejoice with Garten's delectable brownies, which are jam-packed with chocolate chips. These delicious brownies couldn't have been easier to make, and I loved the fudgy texture and the crunch from the walnuts.

These brownies instantly satisfied my sugar cravings and were a huge hit with my family and friends. I know I'll be making them over and over again in the new year.

Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's outrageous brownies here.