Giada De Laurentiis’ Dinner Party Hacks Make Simple Recipes Total Stars

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We love having people over for dinner, but honestly, the pressure of cooking a fancy meal can be so great that we end up not inviting people over at all. But many of our favorite celebrity chefs seem to have cracked the code on entertaining guests by serving simple meals that are amplified with quality ingredients and easy garnishes that take what could be a weeknight dinner and transform it into something totally dinner party-worthy. Giada De Laurentiis‘ Giadzy blog just shared seven of their essential tips for elevating basic recipes so you can be proud to serve them to company. Check out our favorite tips below, and don’t forget to stock your pantry with some of the recommended ingredients so you’re ready for last-minute dinner drop-ins any day of the week.

Oil and Vinegar

Giadzy recommends finishing dishes with olive oil or balsamic vinegar. A high-quality finishing oil will have a bolder flavor than the mild olive oils used for cooking, adding an extra boost to any dish. The lush mouthfeel of the olive oil can help elevate everything from a simple bruschetta to a grilled chicken breast, too, and you can opt for a flavored olive oil if you want to bring even more complexity to your meals.

If your recipes always seem to need some acid to perk the flavors up, then you can use Giadzy’s other hack. Add a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, preferably aged balsamic vinegar from Modena, to recipes that need a little oomph. This style of balsamic vinegar is richly sweet, tangy, and has an almost syrupy texture. Its pricy, but a little goes a long way (and it’s a great gift idea for fellow foodies). You can drizzle it over roasted veggies, seared steaks, salads, and more. In fact, a drizzle of finishing olive oil or sweet balsamic vinegar can even be used to make desserts, from platters of ripe strawberries to pound cake with vanilla gelato, feel like something you’d get at an upscale restaurant.

Texture, Texture, Texture

Two of the other hacks to turn every day dishes into something you’d be proud to serve to company have to do with adding more flavor, yes, but more importantly, texture to your finished dishes. The first texture tip is to add toasted breadcrumbs to your pasta dishes. It’s a simple, affordable way to dress up a simple weeknight meal. You can use leftover bread to make your own breadcrumbs (or opt for store-bought panko breadcrumbs), then toast them in olive oil or butter, adding seasonings like garlic, herbs, or even grated Parmesan cheese if you’d like. This is actually a very traditional Italian move. In Sicily, pasta with breadcrumbs is called pasta ca’ muddicca, while in other parts of Southern Italy, it’s called pasta con la mollica. Not only do the toasted breadcrumbs add more flavor to your pasta dishes, but they also add a textural crunch.

The second tip? After your food is cooked, add flaked sea salt. Obviously boosting the flavor of your dish with extra salinity is going to be a winning move, but flaked sea salt specifically adds crunch to your food, too. You can even opt for an infused sea salt if you want to add even more depth to the dish.

These tips are simple, but make a powerful impact on your recipes. You can turn simple spaghetti aglio e olio into a meal for company with a sprinkle of crunchy finishing salt, or bread and ricotta into an elegant appetizer with a drizzle of quality olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar.

You can read the rest of these clever tips on Giadzy, and in the meantime, you can check out more of Giada De Laurentiis’ pasta recipes and summer recipes for inspiration.

Before you go, check out our gallery:

Watch: How to Make Giada De Laurentiis’ Stuffed Lasagna Rolls