Prince Harry and Meghan Markle became engaged in November 2017 during a quiet night at home, with Markle making roast chicken for her beau ahead of the big question. The recipe for said roast chicken came from chef Ina Garten, who joked on Sunday Today with Willie Geist this weekend that she was the reason for the couple’s wedding earlier this year.
“I do know that she liked to cook my roast chicken,” Garten said. “Which we call engagement chicken because whenever you make it somebody asks you to marry them.”
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Geist told her, “So what we’re driving at here is you were responsible for the royal wedding.”
“Oh, without me it would’ve never have happened,” Garten jokingly responded. “It’s a roast chicken. Isn’t that a wonderful story? How powerful is that?”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex discussed their engagement during an interview with the BBC
“It happened a few weeks ago, earlier this month, here at our cottage — just a standard typical night for us,” Harry said.
Markle added, “Just a cozy night, we were roasting a chicken. It was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee.”
The Duchess revealed that she didn’t even let Harry finish his proposal, as she instantly accepted.
“She didn’t even let me finish,” the Duke recalled. “She said, ‘Can I say yes? Can I say yes?’ and then were was hugs and I had the ring in my finger and I was like, ‘Can I — can I give you the ring?”‘She goes, ‘Oh yes the ring.’ So no it was — it was a really nice moment, it was just the two of us and I think managed to catch her by surprise as well.”
While getting engaged to a prince isn’t exactly attainable for most of us, making Garten’s roast chicken is — the Barefoot Contessa host has both a traditional and updated version of the recipe.
“There is nothing as delicious (or as impressive) as a perfectly roasted chicken,” Markle previously told Good Housekeeping of the recipe. “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.”
The Duchess of Sussex has been candid in the past about her love of food and cooking, and recently provided the foreward for a cookbook she helped create — Together: Our Community Cookbook. The book features recipes from a group of women whose community was affected by the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.
Photo Credit: Getty / Noam Galai
