Taylor Swift Substitutes An Ingredient In Ina Garten's Spaghetti Recipe

When not traveling on record-setting tours or crafting new albums, Taylor Swift loves to tinker in the kitchen. The singer has revealed her love for baking, and shared a go-to cocktail – the five-ingredient French blonde. And in a 2019 Elle piece titled "30 Things I Learned Before Turning 30," Swift lets us in on one of her all-time favorite dinner party recipes — Ina Garten's spaghetti and meatballs.

There's already a charm to experiencing comforting kitchen classics through celebrity eyes, but Swift also shares her savvy substitution, too. In Ina Garten's original rendition, the meatballs rely on a trio of pork, veal, and beef, as well as egg plus two breadcrumb types for binding, and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese for good measure. It's a delicious combination but undoubtedly entails an extensive shopping list.

So to simplify matters, Taylor Swift sticks to only beef for the meat and uses pre-packaged breadcrumbs to bind the dish together. Furthermore, she eases along cooking by reaching for a garlic press — one of her must-have cooking essentials for spaghetti and meatballs — thereby simplifying the sauce's creation, too. Alongside onions and wine, the allium serves as the basis for the aromatic tomato sauce, which ties together the meatballs and spaghetti. Whip up such a batch, and Taylor Swift's fondness for the dish is easy to understand.

Meatball recipes might appear stringent in their composition; however, in practice, the dish is an easy-going canvas for firming up renditions to your own tastes. Feel free to select among proteins like beef, pork, veal, ground chicken, turkey, bison, or vegan alternatives like brown mushrooms or jackfruit. You can skip the meat entirely and use ricotta to make a classic type of meatball: polpetta. Blend together your favorites; while Ina Garten isn't alone in settling in on a trio of meats, you can mix other pairings, too. And you could always stick to Taylor Swift's preference and let one protein shine.

Next up, binding together the meatballs isn't a step worth worrying over, either. Recipes typically use one egg and just over half a cup of breadcrumbs per pound of meat. However, if you're keen to simplify even further, you can even ditch the latter ingredient; with just parmesan and meat, the dish will hold. And while simmering the meatballs in sauce is a classic technique, you could also just broil them for around ten minutes for a quicker alternative. With a basic tomato sauce pre-assembled, you'll just need to boil some pasta, and a delicious spaghetti and meatballs awaits.