15 Store-Bought Shortcuts Celebrity Chefs Actually Use

When watching your favorite celebrity chef on TV, it is easy to assume that, as experts in the kitchen, they make absolutely everything from scratch. While most professional chefs are likely to create the majority of food themselves, everyone has a shortcut or two up their sleeves, and this includes celebrity chefs.

From frozen puff pastry to a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, even the best chefs in the business turn to convenience food once in a while. And if they can do it, we certainly can too, especially if it helps to take the pressure off in the kitchen and get us back to enjoying cooking. From Ina Garten's insistence that "store-bought is fine" to Bobby Flay's genius suggestion for a super-speedy curry, these celebrity shortcuts will help to simplify your cooking without sacrificing flavor. Let's take a look at 15 store-bought shortcuts celebrity chefs actually use

If you have ever felt that you were cheating a little when buying store-bought puff pastry, it may reassure you to know that Ina Garten approves of this little switch. The Barefoot Contessa is known for making life in the kitchen as easy as possible, and puff pastry is one of the ingredients that she is happy to buy pre-made.

For those who love baking, making homemade puff pastry is a labor of love. Folding, rolling, adding some more butter, chilling ... then repeat until you run out of patience. But even if you enjoy this task, it certainly isn't fast, and if you need your pastry soon, making it from scratch is unlikely to be a viable option. Garten actually recommends frozen puff pastry (Pepperidge Farm is her go–to brand), meaning you can always have a block available if you have an urgent pastry need. Whether you are making a classic pot pie or attempting her palmier recipe, store-bought pastry allows you to remove the hassle of folding and kneading and skip to the part where you get to enjoy a flaky, buttery mouthful. Buying puff pastry instead of making it means you can focus on perfecting the delicious ingredients that will go inside instead.

Making homemade custard is one of those tasks that you always think is going to be easier than it is. One minute you are smiling at the beautiful scent of vanilla, the next you are despairing at the mess of curdled eggs in the pan. Thankfully, there is a shortcut, and it is celebrity chef-approved.

Prue Leith has admitted that she is happy to buy ready-made custard, and if it's good enough for the "Bake Off" star, then it is certainly okay for us. She claims she has not made it from scratch in years, and with the range of high-quality custard available in stores, who can blame her? While making custard can be fun, it requires extremely precise techniques to ensure you create a silky smooth liquid, rather than a lumpy mess, and it can take only a second or two to transform from one to the other. Instead, spend your time and effort on the gorgeous dessert it will be served with, and simply heat the store-bought custard before serving.

Making a curry at home, full of bold and spicy flavors, is one of life's little joys. But if you have to make absolutely everything from scratch, it can turn into quite a lengthy process. If you are planning a curry on a weeknight and want to cut a corner without missing out on flavor, Bobby Flay has a great suggestion.

Flay advises using a jar of curry paste when you need to make a quick curry sauce but don't want to sacrifice on heat-packed flavor. He likes to keep both green and red curry paste in the pantry (one is made with red chiles and the other with green), meaning that he can whip up a speedy sauce without the need to chop, peel, and saute. While you can use the paste as a starter for your own sauce recipe, Flay has a further hack to save even more time. Simply cook the curry paste in the pan for a few minutes, add a can of coconut milk, and let it simmer for 15 minutes for the easiest curry sauce you've ever made.

There is nothing better than placing a freshly roasted chicken on the table and letting the whole family tuck in. Cooking said chicken, however, can often seem like too much of a challenge to fit into our busy lives. Preparing the bird, basting it as it cooks, and getting the skin beautifully crispy takes a lot of effort, and buying a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken can be a delicious and convenient shortcut.

Even celebrity chefs take advantage of this culinary shortcut once in a while, with Jean-Georges Vongerichten admitting that if he needs a chicken in a hurry, he is happy to grab a pre-cooked one. He then makes sure to put the carcass to good use by making a soup from the bones. With so many uses for a rotisserie chicken beyond the first meal, from sandwiches and wraps to salads and soups, buying a store-bought rotisserie chicken is a shortcut that can stretch a long way.

As wonderfully comforting as homemade jam is, it takes ages to make, and you need a lot of fruit. Shop-bought jam saves you the hassle of standing over the stove all day, but not all jam is made equal. Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli has a favorite jam brand she likes to turn to when she needs to thicken her pie filling — Bonne Maman.

She shares that she enjoys eating Bonne Maman jam throughout the year, but particularly likes to add the blueberry version to her summer pies. The jam is added alongside fresh berries to create her delicious sweet pastries, helping to set the filling with the pectin in the jam. If you have the time and space (and enough jars) to create your own batch of jam from scratch, you absolutely should, but if you need a high-quality shortcut that won't require a mountain of washing up, Bonne Maman jam is a great backup.

As enthusiastic home cooks, many of us like to make everything from scratch, including pasta sauces. Some evenings, however, it can feel like too much effort even to pull together a simple marinara. The good news is, Lidia Bastianich says it's totally fine to use store-bought when you're in a hurry.

During a cooking segment on the Today show, she reassured viewers that it is okay to buy a jar of marinara sauce if it suits you better, making the creation of her super-easy weeknight lasagna even more speedy. There are so many ready-made sauces on grocery store shelves, so try to find one where the ingredients closely match what you usually add to your homemade sauce for a convenient shortcut. For days when you have plenty of time and energy to cook, homemade marinara sauce will always be a great reward. For the rest of the time, Bastianich's shortcut will get you through.

Even for home cooks who love to make everything from scratch, attempting mayonnaise can be a step too far. It is a very technical task that requires emulsifying egg yolks with oil, which needs to be done slowly to prevent the sauce from breaking. Most of us prefer to turn to a store-bought jar of mayo to save us the stress, and so, it turns out, does domestic goddess Martha Stewart.

Stewart tends to make most of her food from scratch, often with homegrown produce, but when it comes to mayonnaise, she likes to keep a jar in the pantry as a backup. Like many other chefs, including Julia Child and Ina Garten, Stewart cites Hellmann's mayonnaise as her go-to brand. Of course, using store-bought mayo doesn't have to mean a boring condiment. Just like with homemade, you can customize it to suit your dishes, adding lemon, garlic, or mustard to give it a depth of flavor.

If you have ever tried to prepare a pumpkin from scratch, you will understand that it is not an easy task. Once you have cracked into the pumpkin itself, you then need to deseed it, remove the stringy parts, and cook it before you can even begin to think about adding it to your dessert. To save you time and effort, Tim Hollingsworth suggests using canned pumpkin instead.

He recommends that home cooks should always use canned pumpkin puree rather than attempting to prepare it themselves to guarantee the perfect, creamy texture that a pumpkin pie demands. If you are preparing the dessert for a large group over the holidays, this is especially important, as attempting to make the pumpkin puree yourself could end up sabotaging the meal if it doesn't turn out quite as smooth and silky as you'd hoped. Instead, reach for a can of pumpkin to take the stress levels down a notch and free up more time to focus on the rest of the feast.

Having raised five children, Ree Drummond knows a thing or two about the need to save precious time in the kitchen. In her attempts to take shortcuts without sacrificing flavor, she advocates using one or two hacks that will make culinary life easier without ruining the idea of a home-cooked meal. One of these handy shortcuts is keeping some store-bought bread dough in the freezer.

This versatile ingredient can be used to whip up some quick pizzas, rolls to serve with soup, or even speedy bread for breakfast. Rather than the hassle of mixing, kneading, and proofing homemade dough, the frozen version allows you to create mostly homemade dishes with a little help in the carbs department. Little shortcuts like these can help to take the stress out of cooking, while still allowing you to use fresh ingredients elsewhere, and create quick, satisfying meals that the whole family will love.

You would think that someone as proficient at barbecue as Bobby Flay would always insist on making his own sauce, but he understands the convenience of store-bought and often buys it for his own cooking. He advises purchasing a high-quality BBQ sauce and adding your own twist that will set it apart from the usual pedestrian store-bought offering.

In a YouTube video, Flay shares his favorite additions to elevate a bottle of BBQ sauce: Worcestershire sauce, chipotle puree, and a squeeze of fresh lime juice. You can choose to follow his lead or add your own creative twist based on your palate, but either way, buying the bottled sauce gives you a solid, balanced base to work from and will save you time in the kitchen. It also gives you the chance to adjust the heat of your sauce depending on your chili preferences, from mild and subtle to tongue-meltingly hot.

If you are cooking a huge family feast during the holiday season, there are many star dishes to prepare, and you may find that making cranberry sauce from scratch is just a side dish too far. If so, follow in Ina Garten's footsteps and use canned cranberry sauce instead.

The Barefoot Contessa is a big advocate for enjoying time with your guests rather than sweating away in the kitchen, and store-bought cranberry sauce is the ideal way to free up a little time. Canned doesn't have to mean boring, though, and Garten livens hers up with grated apple and a splash of orange juice. Whole-berry cranberry sauce will give the illusion of being homemade since it still has a bit of texture. Ina's approach proves that using canned ingredients doesn't have to mean serving them straight from the can. With a little creative thinking, you can easily create a side dish that tastes just as good as the homemade version.

As culinary techniques go, making a roux is one of the more challenging ones, especially if you've never made it before. It takes a lot of active stirring over a low heat to combine the butter and flour and transform it into the dark brown paste needed for Cajun and Creole cuisine. As much as Isaac Toups loves to make a real roux for entrees, he insists it is perfectly acceptable to reach for some instant roux if you're making a side dish such as his rouxed peas.

Cutting out the lengthy process of making the roux from scratch could save you as much as an hour, as well as the stress of keeping the mixture cooking gently without it burning. Toups' favorite option is Tony Chachere's Creole Instant Roux, and as long as you are not adding it to a classic main course like a gumbo, he encourages you to go ahead and make your life that little bit easier with a culinary shortcut that won't compromise the satisfaction of your side dishes.

If you ever find yourself stressing out over what to serve at a dinner party, assuming that absolutely everything needs to be homemade, take a tip from Julia Child. Despite being responsible for introducing the entire nation to the concept of French gourmet cuisine, the culinary icon had a time-saving shortcut that she used when serving a crowd: Goldfish crackers. As unlikely as it seems, this savory snack was a favorite of Child's, and she had no issues serving a bowl of them at gatherings, including Thanksgiving.

Even if you are not the biggest fan of this particular salty snack, the revelation that Child wasn't above serving store-bought crackers before a fancy dinner should give us all the reassurance we need. Taking the occasional shortcut to reprioritize is definitely allowed, whether it comes in the shape of a goldfish or not.

Mashed potatoes can be the ultimate comforting side dish when made correctly, but they can take quite a while to cook, and peeling potatoes to feed a crowd can get mind-numbing after a while. Ina Garten has a handy shortcut to take the chore out of making mash: Buy store-bought and improve them till they taste like you made them yourself.

Garten has a less conventional method than most for heating her store-bought spuds: using a double boiler. Whether this makes a huge difference to the texture, you will need to test for yourself. Still, as the mash heats in a bowl over simmering water, the Barefoot Contessa adds Parmesan cheese, butter, and some sour cream to transform the flavor and texture from run-of-the-mill store-bought mash to a creamy and decadent delight. Whether you are overwhelmed at the thought of making perfect mashed potatoes for a large party or simply don't have the energy to peel, chop, and mash for your weeknight meal, Garten's tip means you can enjoy the satisfaction of mashed potatoes without the usual effort.

Beans are a brilliant addition to so many meals, adding protein and fiber that make dishes filling as well as delicious. Cooking dried beans from scratch, however, takes a long time, including soaking them overnight in advance. If you are craving beans and need a speedy version, canned beans come celebrity chef-approved.

Michael Symon recognizes that homemade beans are not always a viable option and reveals that many chefs use canned in their restaurants, too. Rather than simply serving up canned baked beans with your next burger, Symon recommends using beans alongside fresh, vibrant ingredients to create tasty dips. Hummus from chickpeas and cannellini bean dips with cilantro or tomato make a delicious spread that can be whipped up in just a few minutes, thanks to the pre-soaked and pre-cooked beans. This particular shortcut is one that won't even be noticed, as the dips will taste just as appetizing as long as you season them well.