Ina Garten Says Her Boozy Thanksgiving Pie Is Better With Store-Bought Crust

Any seasoned Thanksgiving host knows preparing the traditional holiday feast is no small undertaking. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, rolls, and whatever myriad of vegetables and sides your family prefers all take up oven/refrigerator space and time — and that's just the main course! Thankfully, if you're the kind of super host who will make holiday dessert from scratch, the Barefoot Contessa has your back. 

As a lead-up to Thanksgiving, Food Network host and best-selling cookbook author Ina Garten announced on Instagram she'd be sharing one of her favorite Thanksgiving desserts to her page each day in order to offer some holiday inspiration. But Garten's fans shouldn't go fretting that they'll struggle to live up to their favorite celebrity chef's standards. Her first recipe of the week — shared on November 14 — was a twist on the classic pecan pie, with the added bonus that you don't need to bake your own pie crust to make it.

In both the recipe and the post, Garten notes that her Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie actually turns out better with a store-bought pie crust, so you can feel like a gourmet this holiday and still save yourself some valuable time and effort.

Ina Garten's Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie recipe comes straight from her latest book "Go-To Dinners: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook," which was released on October 25, 2022. The TV host says the book, which has already made the New York Times' Best Sellers List, was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, the stress of which Garten says made her rethink how she approached dinner with her go-to recipes (via Detroit Free Press).

True to the book's promise, the perfect-for-Thanksgiving pecan pie takes no more than an hour to make between cooking and prep time and only requires a pair of mixing bowls and a spoon. Simply combine brown sugar, granulated sugar, flour, and salt with two eggs, melted butter, vanilla extract, and bourbon, then add in chocolate chips and chopped pecans and pop it into your store-bought crust to bake. Garten told The New York Times that store-bought crust works better in this recipe because it is less buttery and balances out the decadent filling. 

The Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie is not Garten's only time-saving recipe for Thanksgiving, in addition to her Instagram dessert recommendations, she also published a whole Thanksgiving meal guide for store-bought ingredients in The New York Times for 2022.