Like Meghan Markle, This Actress Swears by Ina Garten’s ‘Engagement Chicken’ Recipe

Lois Alter Mark
Lois Alter MarkContributor
Lois Alter Mark is a contributing writer to Apartment Therapy, Forbes, USA Today 10Best and Reader’s Digest. She started travel writing after accompanying Oprah Winfrey on the Ultimate Australian Adventure, and now enjoys eating her way around the world. A native New Yorker, she and her husband live in San Diego, where they’ve become weather wimps and are still searching for a good slice of pizza. You can follow her adventures @loisaltermark
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published Nov 1, 2021
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Credit: Headshot of Ina Garten: Getty Images

If you’re looking for proof that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, Ina Garten’s “engagement chicken” seems to be it. Don’t believe me? Just ask Emily Blunt and Meghan Markle — both of whom happened to make the iconic dish for their now-husbands before the guys proposed to them. Coincidence? I think not.

On a recent episode of River Café Table 4, iHeart Radio’s popular foodie podcast, host Ruth Rogers asked Blunt what she cooked for John Kraskinski when they were dating. “I just made something that I knew he would love. I mean, a roast chicken. Who doesn’t love roast chicken? And the roast chicken I love is Ina Garten’s roast chicken. It’s called her engagement chicken ‘cause I think when people make it for people, they get engaged or something.” 

The award-winning actress then proceeded to recite the recipe, making it sound even more mouth-watering and delicious with her British accent. “Lemon, garlic, onions up the chicken, thyme, salt and pepper, all that. And you scatter onions around the chicken, but you pack them in really tight into the tray. And then you roast them really high — about an hour and 20 minutes — and they’re done and they’re perfect.”

Noting that when you “take the chickens out,” they are then sautéed in wine, butter, and the mixture of onions and garlic, Blunt then gave her personal approval of the recipe by calling it divine and “really sticky and yummy.”

As a follow-up question, Rogers asked, “And then he fell in love?”

Blunt laughed and said, “That’s it. That’s all it took.”

Garten herself laughed about the idea of “engagement chicken” on Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist a few years ago, admitting that the phrase was coined by an editor at Glamour magazine when staff members started getting engaged one after another after cooking the dish for their boyfriends.

She also laughed about rumors that Meghan Markle had made the roast chicken for Prince Harry before he proposed, joking, “Without me, it never would have happened.” When the couple got engaged, she even tweeted them her congratulations.

For Emily and Ina, however, this isn’t the first time the two have shown love for one another’s cooking skills. Just last year, Ina released Emily’s English Roasted Potatoes recipe and almost immediately after it was posted by Ina, her website crashed because so many people were trying to access it. Now that’s what I call impressive.

You can find our thoughts on the original engagement chicken recipe here and even if you don’t plan on getting engaged any time soon, it can fill in as a yummy love letter to yourself.

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