Taylor Swift's Must-Have Cooking Essential When Making Spaghetti And Meatballs

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Taylor Swift has been making music professionally for more than 20 years now, which means the public has had significant time to get to know her likes and dislikes, especially in the kitchen, since Swift is a known foodie. For example, her favorite foods to throw on the grill are vegetables, and her cocktail of choice is the French Blonde. In 2019, she did an interview with Elle Magazine called "30 Things I Learned Before Turning 30." In it, she revealed that one of her favorite recipes ever is Ina Garten's Real Meatballs and Spaghetti, and the "game changer" cooking essential tool that she uses to help make this dish is a garlic crusher.

Also called garlic presses, most garlic crushers are shaped kind of like citrus squeezers, with two parts on a hinge, like this version from Zulay Kitchen – or, conversely, they're shaped like ovals, with the grates on the bottom and the handle up top (think pastry blender), like this well-rated model from AprYEW. While there's no word on which type Swift uses when crushing garlic for the tomato sauce — though the billionaire can certainly afford multiples — we're not surprised she favors this super-useful kitchen tool. After all, they not only allow you to make quick work of mincing garlic cloves, but they also help keep your fingers free of potent garlic smells — an important consideration when your fingers are your tools of the trade.

Using a garlic crusher isn't the only shortcut Taylor Swift takes when making Ina Garten's Real Meatballs and Spaghetti recipe. To further shorten the total cooking time, she revealed in that same Elle Magazine interview that instead of using two types of breadcrumbs, which the recipe calls for, she just uses store-bought for both. You absolutely could make your own using white, crusty bread and a food processor, like Garten suggests, but why not spare yourself having to clean another appliance, when store-bought (which are "fine," we imagine Garten saying) get the job done just as well — and certainly well enough for a pop superstar icon?

Rather than combine meats, too, Swift only uses beef. Garten's recipe actually calls for three proteins, including ground pork and veal, as well as beef, and while ground pork is more readily available in supermarkets these days, ground veal might be more difficult to source. If you're making this recipe yourself, you absolutely could use two pounds of ground beef, as Swift apparently does, or you could do half-and-half, a pound of ground beef and pork each. We like to think Garten, with her mountain of handy kitchen tools and unfussy cooking style, would approve of all of Swift's shortcuts.