Without Ina Garten, Meghan Markle & Prince Harry Wouldn't Be Married

Make Ina Garten’s chicken recipe, and you could end up marrying a prince.

OK, fine. That’s not true of everyone, but it was definitely the case for Meghan Markle.

To refresh your memory, back in November 2017, Prince Harry proposed to Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex. But before he popped the question, Meghan treated Prince Harry to a home-cooked meal: a roasted chicken recipe pulled straight from one of Garten’s cookbooks.

“It happened a few weeks ago, earlier this month, here at our cottage — just a standard typical night for us,” Harry said in an interview with BBC. 

“Just a cozy night, we were roasting a chicken. It was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee,” Meghan added.

Fast-forward nearly one year, and Garten is still fully aware of the effect her roasted chicken has on people, calling it “engagement chicken” on a recent episode of Sunday Today with Willie Geist.

“I do know that she liked to cook my roast chicken, which we call ‘engagement chicken’ because whenever you make it, somebody asks you to marry them,” Garten told Geist.

“So what we’re driving at here is, you were responsible for the royal wedding,” Geist suggested, to which Garten joked, “Oh, without me it would’ve never have happened. It’s a roast chicken. Isn’t that a wonderful story? How powerful is that?” 

This isn’t the first time Garten has addressed her recipe’s presence on Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s engagement night. 

“I thought it was so great because it shows that everyone is happy to have something simple, and really good,” she told People in November 2017. “It’s nourishing and I love that they were cooking it together. It wasn’t some fancy meal. He did it over a home-cooked meal and a simple roast chicken, which is frankly what everybody wants.”

“Who knew if you make my chicken, you could end up marrying a prince? An adorable prince at that!” Garten added.

Meghan’s decision to make a Garten recipe is far from surprising either. A year before the engagement, Meghan gushed about the recipe in an interview with Good Housekeeping.

"There is nothing as delicious (or as impressive) as a perfectly roasted chicken. If you have an Ina Garten-level roasted-chicken recipe, it’s a game changer. I bring that to dinner parties and make a lot of friends,” Meghan said.

OK, OK, we know what you’re thinking by now. But is this magical roasted chicken easy to make? According to Garten’s website, Barefoot Contessa, it is!

Considered a beginner-level recipe, perfect roast chicken serves three to four people and doesn’t require a whole lot of ingredients. The most difficult part of the process is prepping the chicken, but once you’ve stuffed it, brushed it with butter and herbs and scattered onion slices around the chicken, you simply pop it into the oven. 

Follow the recipe here, and by the end of the night, even if you don’t have your own prince down on one knee, you’ll definitely have a few new friends.

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