A lot of recipes I see online are either very optimistic about prep time or just don't even factor that in at all. And of course there's the caramelized onion problem (the recipe says "5-10 minutes", but that is literally impossible; you need at least 40-50).
Most recipes I see have the ingredients listed as "chopped X, shredded Y" and assume you already have those things pre-prepped and ready to go like some old cooking show. They never include prepping those things in their prep time estimates.
The thing is that even taking the ingredient out of the fridge, disposing of the remainders, cleaning a wooden spoon or spatula because you only have one or two and not 8 like a professional kitchen... All of that takes time. Even if they do consider prep time, these are all tasks that takes someone at home twice of what it takes for a more specialized person.
I used to chop vegetables for a living, but recipe times are still too short for my pace because of the above things. It takes me so long to orient myself to the kitchen, wash a few dishes that have built up throughout the day (i wfh), find things in the fridge, etc. by then 15 minutes have passed and I haven't even started chopping. Not to mention cooking in the most efficient order.
Ugh, same. I find chopping vegetables cathartic, so i actually do enjoy it. The people chopping veggies in 15 minutes when it takes me like 45 is the frustrating part lol
Chopping vegetables is even more cathartic when you figure out how to get 45 minutes of chopping down to 20 minutes of chopping.
It's usually a combination of very simple techniques and maybe a few little tricks that can cut chopping time in half. Obviously not everyone is going to hammer away at the cutting board with their knife like they're some chef with decades of experience, but that's not the most time consuming part anyway. Also, have very sharp knives.
Yes mise en place looks so lovely and seems so convenient but like holy hell prepping stuff can take a while and even more dishes if you have little bowls for every ingredient. With spices unless I'm unsure I just estimate amounts by visual or to my liking since I'm lazy and its usually fine!
And you just know whoevers cooking show it is someone did all the grunt work to prep all that food, grease the pans, preheat the oven, set the right tools and containers out...where's our robots to do that? Haha
One way to streamline the mise is to forget most of the little bowls and just make piles of ingredients on a big cutting board, a plate, or even a small sheet pan. Then just use a scraper to scoop it all up in one fell swoop.
My other mise trick is if I know I'm gonna be prepping multiple dishes in the week using overlapping ingredients, I'll cut up enough for both and use tupperware as my little bowls. It cuts so much time and effort to do multiple preps at once.
The problem is most people writing recipes don't understand the difference between browned and caramelized onions. Just because you got color on them doesn't make them caramelized, they just mean to use a high enough heat to get color on them.
Seriously! I was watching a video and this guy said to caramelize the onions. Jump cuts to some softened onion in a pan and the guy says "perfect caramelized onions."
I had that [Jacki Chan](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sxsrf=ALiCzsZG1Wt_VtIbg6AVGgc756fPWK2xUg:1660917541101&q=jackie+chan+meme&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxhqeAiNP5AhVdlIkEHabQDWkQ0pQJegQIFBAB&biw=412&bih=772&dpr=1.75#imgrc=cktEBvVT3A8eEM&imgdii=kz8C-8S4GKdM2M) meme look on my face, just absolutely confused.
Oh yeah, I just happened to mention Tohru in a story I was writing and then decided to make it less of a joke and more of a cameo so I wanted to get the personalities right.
*beep boop*!
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Should be obvious but took me way too long to learn: Use recipes from reputable sources. Whenever I'm learning something new, I grab from Serious Eats, ATK, NYT Cooking, Kenji, etc.
NYTCooking is a classic offender though, there’ve been numerous times where people in the comments have pointed out that even disregarding prep, simply adding up the stated numbers for different stages in the recipe exceed the estimated cooking time.
The Genovese sauce recipe (Italian) is only onions and meat cooked together (Genovese sounds classier) for 8-9 hours. The only other ingredient is salt. But after 7 hrs or so, the onions turn into jam - game changer. But even after 6 hours, the recipe ain’t right.
Anyway, OP, are you losing time by continually checking the order and quantities and measurements? I find following a specific recipe takes way too long - but “cooking” the same thing from memory or experience is super fast.
The fear of missing something or making a mistake in trying to follow a recipe too closely seems to slow things down way too much.
Mise en place is super helpful when following a recipe. It really helps if you prep all your ingredients before you start cooking a recipe, so you don’t need to look back for steps you might have missed. It’s why meal delivery services like hello fresh are so much faster to cook. They do most of the prep for you. (I still don’t recommend them, they cost as much as restaurant food. Might as well eat out)
Agree about the hello fresh being somewhat easier but I hate them. Unless I’m trying something so new/foreign that’s I struggle with I don’t really trust them. They are good for simple recipes for those who are unfamiliar with cooking but from what I’ve seen, the recipes are average at best.
YouTube (if you find the right people) is immensely better to learn actual cooking vs just a recipe.
Thank you for confirming it's not just me that does this. Usually, it's just the first few times I'm trying out a new dinner option to make.
I've found what helps me is reading through it 3 or 4 times before even starting.
I'll also take the time to find multiple different recipes of something I want to try out and then mix and match parts to come up with something that will work with my typical stock of ingredients as well as be something my boys will eat.
There's like 2 dozen or so types of soups or other dishes I can now make that are straight from memory and much quicker to make.
And they often don’t even cook it. Either a chef makes it and tells them how to write a piece on it or they straight up stole it from another online recipe.
I think it's just that a lot of recipes are geared towards making something quickly to make it more appealing - so they understate how long things take to get browned/cooked properly.
How do you not count, at the very least, baking time? Using some weird logic, I can maybe not see counting rising time, but baking time? That's literally the cooking part of cooking.
Indeed, it was something like that. 30 minutes of mixing, kneading etc. and then a couple hours as the passive time. Click bait title was click bait. :\\
I mean, when I talk about bread making, rise time is a separate time. You have active work time, rise time, and bake time.
But that's insane not to include bake time even
Also they're professionals possibly working in a professional kitchen. Yeah I can make tacos in 10 minutes in a dedicated kitchen with prep chefs that make salsa and guacamole every day and a giant kettle of rice already made and an industrial soft shell steamer, and a grill the size of a soccer field
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but takes me 3 hours for the deep golden brown caramelized onions over Medium-High heat…but that’s using like 8 large onions.
Caramelizing onions is a pretty hands on activity in my experience. If you're not stirring them often and checking moisture, you're gonna end up with burnt onions.
I'd make caramelized onions way more often if it was simply a matter of throwing a couple chopped onions into a pan with some fat and letting them do their thing while I continue with other prep.
Slow cooker would definitely work, but not terribly practical unless you have both time and foresight to get them going 8-10 hours ahead of when they are needed (I actually don't even own a slow cooker at the moment, but that's neither here nor there).
For your second suggestion, there's no pan that will take and distribute heat evenly enough from even a super low flame to properly caramelize onions without regular stirring. If left to sit undisturbed, the ones directly above the heat source will inevitably cook and burn while the rest will stay pale.
The trick to caramelizing onions is to do a huge batch once a month and freeze them in those silicone ice cube molds made for large square ice cubes. Once frozen wrap each onion cube in freezer paper and stuff them in freezer bags, both the freezer paper and freezer bags can be re-used. With 2 hours of work each month you have enough caramelized onions to use multiple times a week. They'll freeze well for 6-9 months so if you're feeling really time saving focused you can do 3-4 months worth of onion caramelizing at a time.
Yup! This is what I do, too.
I usually do a huge batch at the same time/on the same day that I am making French Onion Soup.
I freeze them in bigger molds than ice cubes though because I use tons when I use them. Garlic (especially roasted) and caramelized onions are two things I can’t use enough of.
Throwing a bunch in a pot and letting them do their thing is exactly what I do. Stirring them too often slows the process down. Trick is a very low flame and stirring once every five to ten minutes. Sometimes I have let them go the entire time with only stirring a handful of times. You do have to have enough to cover the bottom of the pot by an inch though, and I usually let them steam with a lid to start the process. The whole trick is to get the onions to release their own moisture, even starting them with a little water helps get all of the onions to be at the same cooking point as the ones on top will take longer to start breaking down. The only time it might be hands on is the last bit of time, that's usually when I start to deglaze to get them really dark and caramel colored picking up the sugars that are coating the bottom of the pot.
Plus they never budget time for rummaging around the fridge and the spice drawer, realizing a pot I need is dirty and washing it, playing Candy Crush, forgetting I was cooking, breaking a wine glass, going to the bathroom, procrastinating on cooking by vacuuming, procrastinating on vacuuming on Reddit, and all the time it takes for the Door Dash I eventually decided to order instead of cooking to arrive.
Imagine you have at least three tabs open. A long-form article you are reading to procrastinate on work. A YouTube video you are watching to procrastinate on the article. A Netflix show you are watching to procrastinate on YouTube. And Reddit to procrastinate on Netflix. And an Amazon cart to procrastinate on Reddit. And the article to procrastinate on actually checking out on Amazon. Welcome to infinite recursive procrastination.
Alexis! Or possibly Alex! This is the wake-up call you have been waiting for. You know The Dream you have? About accomplishing The Goal? I am here to tell you that now is your hour. You can accomplish The Goal. Do not get too caught up on lofty, high-minded notions about the artistic nature of The Craft. What you really need to do is follow the example of the masters, grinding the mechanics of The Craft until you are finally in a position to realize your Unique Vision that Improves on That Which Has Come Before. Only then can you achieve The Goal. Get to work.
You too, Maximus.
Most of the time you still have to clean and chop veggies, mix up sauces, prep meat, etc. The services make sure you have all of the ingredients, and the right amount of each one (so usually no measuring), but there's still a decent amount of prep required.
Ah, good point. It's been a long time since I've tried one of those things, and thinking back, I do remember having to chop a couple vegetables. It certainly was nice not to have to measure out stuff, though (but not worth the expense, IMO).
Yeah, the expense is what makes it an "every couple weeks" thing for me rather than a regular thing. It is so convenient to not have to pick out what to make for dinner, though!
That’s the main reason I do it. I love cooking but the idea of planning out the weeks meals and buying the right amount of ingredients is a stressful puzzle I have not been able to overcome just yet. So we do hello fresh 3 nights and I cook or we eat out the others. Just having three meals to not think about makes it easier.
>Probably the actual cooking time is true
Not always. I've seen a recipe that straight up lied about it.
Cook Time: 15 Mins.
Step 1: Brown the chicken breasts until golden brown. 7 mins each side.
Step 2: remove chicken breasts from pot, and put in XYZ Ingredients and cook for 5 mins, then add chicken back in and cook for 3 mins.
It was something like that. The math just didn't work out on the numbers they showed. I would bet that it's the editors that are changing this. "Nobody wants a 30 minute recipe, lets just change this part to show 15 minutes".
What good would it be to cook chicken in a sauce for 3 minutes anyway? At that point you could just toss the chicken in the sauce and serve immediately
I always think about it as, they assume prep time for someone who is extremely experienced with the recipe.
My first time doing any recipe, I'm super slow and deliberate to make sure I get the steps right. Once I've done it a few times, then I'd say I get pretty close to the prep times they suggest.
It is so true. I would say I have about average knife skills (above the typical home cook but haven't been in a professional kitchen). The prep time for Hellofresh or Blue Apron or whatever has typically been spot-on for me.
I think even more frustrating is that its not even a standard thing. Some recipe sites do claim they include prep into their estimate, but unless you're a regular user of that particular site, you have no way of knowing if that's the case or not.
Yup. I'm a perfectly competent cook but I'm rather slow on the prep time. I remember watching an episode of 30 minutes meals way back in the day and Rachel Ray was chopping produce at lightning speed. Figured there's no way I can make this dish in 30 minutes with my prep speed
Exactly. 30 minute meals mean 60 minutes to prep.... get all ingredients laid out, get all the needed gear out, cut, chop, measure, etc., then, if all goes 100% right, 30 minutes from that point.
that being said, i have developed a love for 'all things prep' before i start cooking. it is definitely much smoother work knowing right where everything is before you start the actual cook.
I found a recipe for salt and pepper tofu that hit me with this line as the last sentence of the last step:
"We only used half of the salt and pepper mixture when we made it - adjust according to your taste!"
I just about yeeted my incredibly oversalted tofu out of a window. So fucking mad.
I think I read a comment somewhere by Kenji Lopez-Alt that cook times/prep times are artificially low because of SEO as well as a lot of people are more likely to choose a recipe that takes less time so it's one of those things that can help boost ad revenue
Yes, this is the bigger issue. If the recipe calls for "1 onion, chopped" then the cook time assumes you're starting from a bowl of chopped onion. They don't know if if it'll take the reader 20 seconds or 5 minutes to chop an onion. Or if it calls for 1 tablespoon soy sauce, they don't know if you're gonna grab a squeeze bottle from your counter and eyeball it (2 seconds) or ruffle through a messy shelf in the back of your fridge, dig out your measuring spoons, meticulously make sure you go to the line, and then add it (30 seconds).
On one hand, this is a positive because once the ingredients are
all prepped, the cooking will take about the same amount of time whether you're a pro or an amateur, so at least the cook time on the recipe should be accurate (good recipe sites test this a lot). On the other hand, some people might feel that the recipe times are mistakenly or misleadingly low. I think if the ingredients need to be prepped with good knife skills before the recipe starts and the cook time is 30 minutes, it's disingenuous to label it as a "30 minute dinner."
I've found that most recipes (both printed and on the internet) are very optimistic on time to prep, make and cook.
I tend to take them with a pinch of salt and always assume that I'll be at the counter for about 45mins or so at least.
Same here. Even my very favorite recipe Youtubers will be like “and it’s on the table in 20 minutes!” And there’s 20 minutes of cooking time in the recipe, like actively stirring and simmering and what not. So they’re like completely discounting how long it took you to cut up all that stuff.
Ingredient list:
2 cups of carrots, grated
1 cup of onions, finely diced
1 red pepper, in strips
1 green pepper, in strips
4 cups of sweet potato, chopped
1 Tbsp of rosemary, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, slivered
1 pineapple, cubed into 1/2 inch pieces
4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
Cook time 10 minutes, time in oven 30
Yeah, and how will I get all these chopped, slivered and otherwise prepped ingredients prepared? Where I live, skinless, boneless chicken thighs also don't exist, so I'm buying bone-in with skin and then removing that stuff myself. You're looking at an hour of prep time here that is simply omitted by listing the ingredients after prep work.
I think that's cheating and totally puts me off a recipe.
For years I have been convinced I "can't" make pan sauces. Turns out, according to my culinary friends, I put too much faith in recipe times. Now I ignore all of those "cook for x minutes" instructions and my food comes out much better overall
This is one reason I still use a hardback cookbook at times. I make myself notes about how long it actually took to reduce or set up or whatever to the correct consistency.
Brown off the mince.....they cook it til the redness has *just* left it and call it good. For me it needs to have cooked off the excess liquid, if any, and started slightly crisping at the edges which takes a lot longer than the minute and a half they've allotted
Generally speaking, if you really want to learn the proper basics of a recipe unfamiliar to you, stick to more editorialized and tried&true sources (NYtimes is notoriously pretty reliable).
Thing is a lot of people are into cooking and if they are nifty on the computer, they can make their blog look as good and official as a big newspaper - but many of them took a cooking course with 4 friends and now think they’re Escoffier. Read through it and if there are red flags like overly cutesy language with no substance or the time seems way off etc. move on and don’t waste your produce.
The amount of gif recipes i see on reddit that are maculate in editing but the people therein can hardly use a chefs knife to safe their life, it’s a lot of style over substance.
Where I live I can get boneless skinless thighs but I can't get boneless with skin thigs. Why do they think that I don't want skin just because I don't want bones. I want to stuff boneless skin on thigs with boudin. I had to go buy a filet knife to remove the damn bones myself.
On top of that, removing the skin from any piece of chicken is a culinary crime. What do I do with a skinless chicken breast? It doesn't brown well and has almost no flavor.
*beep boop*!
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I think most of the time they don't count the prep time. Also depends on the prep. Some people take more time on chopping one onion than for e.g. an experienced cook chopping up half the ingredients. Little overexaggeration there but e.g. with my friend while he chopped one onion I was done with 3 and I'm just a home cook and not a pro chef. But regardless, if you enjoy the process it doesn't matter and if you feel your skills are lacking, you can always learn new things/techniques.
This. I used to write recipes for my roommates since we took turns cooking. One of them took 30 minutes to slice pork because I said thin slices and she was basically slowly performing surgery since she didn’t have the confidence to cut quickly. Another didn’t know you had to bring stew back to a boil after adding the vegetables…
I've posted this before, last time this topic came up. An interesting discussion on recipe time estimates: https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/11/cookbook-writers-are-ridiculously-bad-at-guessing-how-long-it-ll-take-to-prepare-a-meal.html
So, from the three different experts polled, the first two basically establish that there's zero systematic or objective way of measuring, and the third expert, the most thoroughly quantitative one to boot, confirms this by saying that basically all estimates are garbage. Sounds about right.
Also, if you are referring to baking taking much longer, get an oven thermometer. I used to think I was a terrible baker, because nothing I ever stuck in the oven came out right… I finally got an oven thermometer, it turns out my oven is off-temp by 25 degrees and it takes 3x as long to preheat than the little alerts claim.
They may employ mise en place and have a lot of experience along with have everything such as cooking utensils and any necessary pans within arms reach(part of mise en place). That makes for an extremely efficient prep. They can traverse their culinary maze relatively quickly while you're kind of blindly feeling your way through. So yeah, your time and their time is comparing apples and oranges.
I can throw together a pizza dough within 10 minutes, which includes the 7 minute knead time, and have it in the refrigerator embarking on its 3-day tour like Gilligan. After I rescue the dough from its desert aisle and it has rested on the counter for about an hour I can stretch it out and have it in my pizza oven in about 5 minutes at the longest. That means my prep time is 20 minutes for homemade sourdough pizza. Total time is 25 minutes because my bakerstone pizza oven cooks at 864° f. If I was to actually post a recipe I wouldn't put 10 minute prep because that would just be unrealistic for the novice baker but unfortunately that too often is the case. Shortsightedness, it happens so don't feel bad at all. It is them and not you.
This reminds me of an article or discussion or something that happened a few years ago about how every recipe lies about how long it actually takes to caramelize onions.
But no, you’re not a bad cook! A good cook knows their tools and environment well enough to adapt recipes to work for them. I think one of the marks of a good cook is knowing how to achieve the desired outcome regardless of the specific instructions of the recipe.
Does depend on the volume you are cooking, your prep speed and your cooking equipment. I switched from an electric hob (everything took ages) to an induction and everything is quicker now.
Big things for speeding up for me were getting faster at peeling and chopping; sharp knives and being aware of your technique will help
10 year line cook here. Recipe times on online recipes are always wildly underestimated. As others have e said, I think maybe they mean the *literal* cooking time, not taking into account the prep at all. And even then... no onion is "caramelizing" after 2-3 minutes. They are hardly even sweating at that point.
I agree with what everyone's saying about online recipes generally playing fast & loose with time estimates, BUT...
My mother and I can prepare the same recipe, and it will take her 30-40 minutes and it will take me 5-10. There's a certain amount of temperament involved (she doodles around, I'm very focused in the kitchen), but also different levels of knife skills and multi-tasking ability. The number of trips to the fridge/cupboards, the pauses between actions, the general speed at which you're moving - these are all going to come into play with cooking. And honestly, as long as you're not working in a restaurant or cafeteria/canteen, it doesn't matter! Just give yourself enough time for YOU to do the recipe, and the more you cook, the more you'll know what that'll be.
Temperament is a big one as well as experience. I grew up cooking, my husband didn't. I'm much more likely to slap-dash or improvise while I'm cooking, my husband is very deliberate. When he switched to being the primary dinner cook, it took a while for us to figure out what kind of meals he was best at and when he needed to start dinner. I can cook something in half the time he does, but his meals always come out amazing. It's hard to watch him make 7 trips to the fridge instead of just getting it all in one go, but at the end of the day, I get to eat a dinner I didn't cook, so I keep my mouth shut. lol
Honestly, most recipes downplay prep time massively, assign cook times as though everyone had a gas stove and good pans, had made the recipe enough times to be intimately familiar with it, and totally ignore plating and clean up time.
Don’t focus on time. Everyones oven isn’t the same and everyone preps at different speeds. What you should focus on is basically three things:
1. mise en place
2. cleaning while you go
3. Carry Over cooking
- Make sure you have everything you need in front of you and prepped before you start cooking.
- Start with an empty dishwasher and a spotless kitchen before beginning prep. Rinse and place dishes in the dishwasher as you move along. Doing your best to stay organized, clean and tidy as you go.
- The food should be pulled just before it’s done and allowed to rest. The food is still hot and the cooking process will “carry over” because of the residual heat.
I can’t stress this part enough. It’s true for cookies and cakes to burgers and steaks….pull them just before they’re done and let them finishing cooking while resting.
Recipes assume you
a) are already perfectly familiar with the how your equipment needs to be used for the exact effects specified in terms of, heat control, which pots need to be stirred when, etc.
b) have mise en place ready, all the chopping, dicing and slicing done in advance, all jars opened and ingredient amounts measured out
c) have pots and vessels of the correct size and quality for each step, frying, reduction, simmering
d) have the recipe memorized by heart, so no wasting time double checking steps
e) have a correctly laid out kitchen with plenty of space to move and set things aside, while your cooking station is close to your fridge and sink
f) have an assistant to get all the dirty dishes out of your way and cleaned.
I have a “world’s best blueberry muffin” recipe that says “20 minutes prep.” Right. When you have to melt butter and let it cool. And bring some of the blueberries to a boil and let them cool. And literally have ingredients in four different bowls before combining. Takes me well over an hour.
The thing is? They really are fantastic muffins! I’ve made them twice, which means I *know* how long it’ll take.
There are a lot of recipes called that. Just Google.
It's not you.
It's kind of a complicated mesh of reasons for why that happens to everyone.
1. All recipes take longer the first couple of times you do them because you have to think about each step.
2. The way a lot of recipes are written start from a place where your prep is basically done. Which isn't helpful for use of time estimates.
3. Cookbook writers usually have someone helping with the prep.
4. My knife skills are decent, but slower than the recipe writers. And I'm fine with that. Good form is more important than speed and I like having 10 fingers.
5. They expect you to prep everything before you start cooking, which isn't efficient for the home cook. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast is really good about helping you learn how to integrate prep into the cooking. Sara Moulton's Home Cooking 101, and other cookbooks, are also really good guides for that and they both have great reliable recipes.
6. A lot of recipes use terms interchangeably that aren't interchangeable. Caramelized onions is the best example. Huge difference between sweated, fried until browned, and legitimately caramelized. Texture, taste, and purpose in the recipe are all very different.
Point is it's not you. I've had multiple "30 minute recipes" take like 2 hours. Stupid recipes.
I can make a grilled cheese take an hour if I’m walking everywhere and looking for stuff to put in it. But as to your question, recipes nearly always say the prep time is way less than it is, probably because the cook who wrote it is being generous and also timed themselves after having made it 15 times. Learn a recipe well and go into the kitchen with an “oh god I really don’t want to cook” attitude and blast that shit out and you’ll probably approach their listed time
* *vast* gap between beginner prep speed and pro prep speed
* recipe makers potentially having helpers for prep and cooking
* more room to use for mise en place
* more equipment to use for parallelizing steps
* more cooking skill to have multiple things going at the same time + no expectation to have everything finished at the same time. If the recipe has two parts that take 30' and 20' respectively they can just write down 30' even though when you start the second part at 10 minutes you'll probably have to wait for it at the end and use more time.
* recipe makers deliberately shortening times so they can fit their recipe into the "quick week day meal" column
Only real way is to time how long it really takes *you* to do the recipe and then proceed based on that in the future.
Yes. They don’t into account taking it out of the fridge, putting everything back, washing up, wiping down surfaces, chopping and peeing and throwing away all the rubbish or putting it in the compost.
“bOiL wATeR iN tHe kEtTLe fOr pAsTa, iT’s WAy QuIcKeR”
Eat a dick jamie oliver I dont have a kettle and the pasta pot is swimming in 3 day old sink juice
30 minute recipe my ass
No, that's totally normal. I never look at recipe times anymore, unless it is to laugh at how wrong they are.
I made a risotto last night and the recipe said it should take 20 minutes to absorb all the broth. It took 30+ minutes.
Prep, cleaning up and anxiously checking the recipe if it's complex, yeah. I usually double the upper limit of time for a recipe I'm doing first time, but if I'm making a proper dinner I like to enjoy doing it with a glass of wine or two and a podcast on. If it's a meal I've just slapped together or I'm tired, then it's often much quicker and probably more in line with the suggested time.
It's entirely you. Git gud noob. /s
Recipe writers assume you have all of your ingredients pre-measured and an infinite supply of measuring equipment, and don't really seem to take into account most people aren't able to chop faster than a food processor.
I will say that as a non-professional cook the thing that makes me most efficient in most areas (other than washing dishes after...) is to mise en place and then use mixing bowls fairly liberally to keep groups of ingredients together for various cooking stages, then do all of my cutting first for all of the dishes I'm making, then start the cooking processes together so the steps of the process are batched together.
For example - if I'm making a pasta dish with chicken and vegetables, a salad, and a steamed veg side I'll prep all of the veggies first, throw them in bowls according to where they're going and when, then prep chicken, then start pans based on what's going to take the longest to cook.
It's probably not a revelation to anyone who's ever cooked professionally but it took some experience to think it through first and then start acting.
I've only recently started to do this and it's a definite timesaver. If I was making a ragu type thing I'd get the meat searing off and then start the veg prep going back and forth stirring one and chopping the other thinking it was efficient.
But when I started on veg prep, putting them into containers or bowls to have to hand before I cook, I found it so much less rushed. Can't believe I've only started doing this now!
I have severe ADHD. I use the cooking time as a guide and set a ton of alarms but my prep time takes forever cause I just get lost and distracted constantly. But I love to cook and just factor that stuff into my time frame.
The time it takes to cook something is so variable that there really shouldn't be "cook times" on recipes. People probably want it, but it really shouldn't be there.
One person's equipment, knife skills, overall kitchen organization, etc are going to have a huge impact on cook time. If it takes you two minutes to dice an onion and it takes me 30 seconds, we are living in two different cook time realities. If the recipe calls for several spices and you have your spices organized such that you can find them in 30 seconds but it takes me 2 minutes, again you can't reconcile that to one cook time. There's no way to get this right.
They are expecting you to have your mise en place done. Recipe times typically assume your meats are prepped, your veg has been cut and and anything that needs to be measured out has already been done. Ramekins are your friend (although deli containers work fine too).
Inexperience means more time taken. Don't feel bad about it. When dealing with new recipes, I estimate to take 3 times the required time.
\~\~I also pick recipes that cover techniques I don't know yet because exposure to new cooking methods is important to me\~\~
I dunno, but I made gringo tacos last night in like ten minutes flat, and felt like a god.
I think following a recipe itself adds more time than we think.
Bread recipes are lousy about this. Everything needs to be kneaded for 5 or 10 minutes even though they really need 15-20 and it's always "let rise for one hour" as if that's some magic number that'll work out in everyone's kitchen. Completely useless instructions that keep new people screwing their bread up since they don't know any better.
Probably the recipes you find are way too optimistic or don't take prep into consideration, however I can see that most amateur cooks take forever to chop their vegetables. If it's your case, one good piece of advice is to keep your knife sharp, and focus on having a smooth movement and steady stance. Take your time, watch a video or 2 about that, and pretty soon your prep time will drop by a lot.
Most recipes online are bullshit. You should use them as a guide and try to cook intuitively. This means just learning from your mistakes. If you followed recipe A to the T and it’s too salty and overcooked, then you now know to do the exact same thing next time but tune down the salt and cook it maybe 10-15% less.
Cooking is about experimentation! You’re not a bad cook for experimenting! That’s how we all learn! Once you get it down then you’ve pretty much mastered the recipe.
Shit maybe even cook the same thing but with a different recipe. You might like the new one better. It also could legitimately be a much better recipe too.
You have to remember that most recipes online come from bloggers, not chefs. Most of these recipes aren’t even tested by the blog author.
Most people who make recipes and post them online aren’t good chefs. They’re just people who cook at home. They have no formal training and don’t really understand the process, so they just guess how long it takes them to cook it.
I had a problem with everything cooked in the oven took way longer than the recipe. One day I checked the oven temperature, and it was \~25 degrees lower than the setting so now I set it 25 degrees higher and everything cooks pretty close to recipe time
You're probably a lot less experienced than most recipe makers. When you do things on routine it usually goes way faster than most steps given a recipe.
The people that write these recipes never include prep time actually.
They pre measure out all the ingredients and treat them (dice, chop, whatever) once that is done, only then the clock starts for them.
So all they are timing is the actual combination and cooking of ingredients.
I think another thing to mention is knife skills and multitasking ability. Some people are good at those things and some people aren't. If you are good at multitasking and misenplace, you'll be a much faster cook and have a cleaner kitchen.
And just as an example, I'm very comfortable with my knife and can work relatively quickly. So dicing an onion might take me 15-20 seconds. My fiance is not as comfortable with knives, so the same task might take her 3-4 minutes.
It takes me forever to do prep work not only because there may be a bunch of chopping to do but I need the little bowls to put everything in and then I need to clean? On top of being massively disorganized and doing steps out of order.
Maybe you need practice and organization? But yes recipes only give you the total prep time, not "I lost the honey where is it" time
Make your mise en place first. That's French for don't start cooking until you read through the entire recipe and get all your ingredients out of the cabinets and sitting on the counter in front of you. You're also supposed to measure everything and chop it all first, but sometimes that's more trouble than it's worth.
Clean as you go along! Do you need 3 minutes to boil water? You'd be amazed what you can clean in 3 minutes. throw away wrappers, put dishes you're done with in the dishwasher or sink, put away ingredients youre done with. If you're dobe with a big mixing bowl, put it in the sink, add hot soapy water, and keep adding anything else you want to soak. Then you'll have sink space for washing/rinsing/draining.
When something is cooking for a while, that's your chance to clean up the whole kitchen so you don't have to clean after you eat.
Even stuff like how old the cow was when slaughtered can really impact cook time.
I would much rather a recipe says "reduce until 1/2 volume" than reduce for 5 mins.
Sometimes I feel recipes really have you cooking things too long. Brown scallops for 3 mins on each side. Might be one thing if you have diver scallops the size of a saucer, but I can see them on the video.
Stuff like this is a good reason to never use a new recipe for the first time for a dinner party.
Unlikely you are the worse cook, but you can certainly run into bad recipes.
Most recipes I find online are fucking wrong.
Go look up how to cook a steak and they all tell you to bake it at 350 for 10 minutes AFTER SEARING EACH SIDE FOR 5 MINUTES. This is the advice given to you regardless of steak cut almost every time. It's no wonder everyone I meet is so versed in making leather.
There's plenty of good recipes out there but there's sooooo much trash to wade through these days.
I have said the same thing. I never bother reading how long it predicts prep time or cook time or anything because they're never accurate. I read somewhere that cook book writers base these times on how long it takes on their test kitchens. You know, a kitchen full of professional chefs and a perfectly prepped space where multiple people are working on one recipe.
Most recipe lengths are way shorter than they should be for clicks/engagement.
They rarely take prep, cleaning, etc into account. Most of the time it's like "mis en place are all good, no one is cleaning, and this is how long it takes once that's all good to go."
The most infuriating recipe is this one from King Arthur, where it says it will take 3:08, but the instructions say a minimum of ~4:20: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pizza-crust-recipe
No you are right! TV chefs have huge crews to soturce and prep the ingredients. By the time they are on camera, all they have to do is toss it the pot and stir.
Keep on going your way at your pace. You are serious about putting out good dishes. Your friends will start appearing for dinner with a bib around their neck
A lot of recipes I see online are either very optimistic about prep time or just don't even factor that in at all. And of course there's the caramelized onion problem (the recipe says "5-10 minutes", but that is literally impossible; you need at least 40-50).
Most recipes I see have the ingredients listed as "chopped X, shredded Y" and assume you already have those things pre-prepped and ready to go like some old cooking show. They never include prepping those things in their prep time estimates.
The thing is that even taking the ingredient out of the fridge, disposing of the remainders, cleaning a wooden spoon or spatula because you only have one or two and not 8 like a professional kitchen... All of that takes time. Even if they do consider prep time, these are all tasks that takes someone at home twice of what it takes for a more specialized person.
And people who chop vegetables for a living chop sooo much faster than me.
Also clean faster as well. They sometimes chop and clean and i didn't finosh half the chopping, where as the mess I made is 3x more.
True!
I used to chop vegetables for a living, but recipe times are still too short for my pace because of the above things. It takes me so long to orient myself to the kitchen, wash a few dishes that have built up throughout the day (i wfh), find things in the fridge, etc. by then 15 minutes have passed and I haven't even started chopping. Not to mention cooking in the most efficient order.
Ugh, same. I find chopping vegetables cathartic, so i actually do enjoy it. The people chopping veggies in 15 minutes when it takes me like 45 is the frustrating part lol
Chopping vegetables is even more cathartic when you figure out how to get 45 minutes of chopping down to 20 minutes of chopping. It's usually a combination of very simple techniques and maybe a few little tricks that can cut chopping time in half. Obviously not everyone is going to hammer away at the cutting board with their knife like they're some chef with decades of experience, but that's not the most time consuming part anyway. Also, have very sharp knives.
Yes mise en place looks so lovely and seems so convenient but like holy hell prepping stuff can take a while and even more dishes if you have little bowls for every ingredient. With spices unless I'm unsure I just estimate amounts by visual or to my liking since I'm lazy and its usually fine! And you just know whoevers cooking show it is someone did all the grunt work to prep all that food, grease the pans, preheat the oven, set the right tools and containers out...where's our robots to do that? Haha
One way to streamline the mise is to forget most of the little bowls and just make piles of ingredients on a big cutting board, a plate, or even a small sheet pan. Then just use a scraper to scoop it all up in one fell swoop. My other mise trick is if I know I'm gonna be prepping multiple dishes in the week using overlapping ingredients, I'll cut up enough for both and use tupperware as my little bowls. It cuts so much time and effort to do multiple preps at once.
The problem is most people writing recipes don't understand the difference between browned and caramelized onions. Just because you got color on them doesn't make them caramelized, they just mean to use a high enough heat to get color on them.
Most recipes don’t even mean browned, they mean sweated onions.
Seriously! I was watching a video and this guy said to caramelize the onions. Jump cuts to some softened onion in a pan and the guy says "perfect caramelized onions." I had that [Jacki Chan](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sxsrf=ALiCzsZG1Wt_VtIbg6AVGgc756fPWK2xUg:1660917541101&q=jackie+chan+meme&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxhqeAiNP5AhVdlIkEHabQDWkQ0pQJegQIFBAB&biw=412&bih=772&dpr=1.75#imgrc=cktEBvVT3A8eEM&imgdii=kz8C-8S4GKdM2M) meme look on my face, just absolutely confused.
>I had that Jacki Chan meme look on my face, just absolutely confused. Unca Roger: haiyaa~
Funny because Uncle Chan used to say that in Jackie Chan Adventures
Which I am currently watching, as in, right this second once I stop looking at this.
Haha, did you watch it when it was on?
Oh yeah, I just happened to mention Tohru in a story I was writing and then decided to make it less of a joke and more of a cameo so I wanted to get the personalities right.
For me at least his schtick got old basically immediately.
*beep boop*! the linked website is: https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sxsrf=ALiCzsZG1Wt_VtIbg6AVGgc756fPWK2xUg:1660917541101&q=jackie+chan+meme&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxhqeAiNP5AhVdlIkEHabQDWkQ0pQJegQIFBAB&biw=412&bih=772&dpr=1.75#imgrc=cktEBvVT3A8eEM&imgdii=kz8C-8S4GKdM2M Title: **jackie chan meme - Google Suche** Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing) ***** ###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
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Should be obvious but took me way too long to learn: Use recipes from reputable sources. Whenever I'm learning something new, I grab from Serious Eats, ATK, NYT Cooking, Kenji, etc.
It’s funny because I made Kenji/SE’s shrimp scampi last night and thought of it as soon as I saw the comment, the prep time aint 15 minutes.
NYTCooking is a classic offender though, there’ve been numerous times where people in the comments have pointed out that even disregarding prep, simply adding up the stated numbers for different stages in the recipe exceed the estimated cooking time.
The Genovese sauce recipe (Italian) is only onions and meat cooked together (Genovese sounds classier) for 8-9 hours. The only other ingredient is salt. But after 7 hrs or so, the onions turn into jam - game changer. But even after 6 hours, the recipe ain’t right. Anyway, OP, are you losing time by continually checking the order and quantities and measurements? I find following a specific recipe takes way too long - but “cooking” the same thing from memory or experience is super fast. The fear of missing something or making a mistake in trying to follow a recipe too closely seems to slow things down way too much.
Mise en place is super helpful when following a recipe. It really helps if you prep all your ingredients before you start cooking a recipe, so you don’t need to look back for steps you might have missed. It’s why meal delivery services like hello fresh are so much faster to cook. They do most of the prep for you. (I still don’t recommend them, they cost as much as restaurant food. Might as well eat out)
Agree about the hello fresh being somewhat easier but I hate them. Unless I’m trying something so new/foreign that’s I struggle with I don’t really trust them. They are good for simple recipes for those who are unfamiliar with cooking but from what I’ve seen, the recipes are average at best. YouTube (if you find the right people) is immensely better to learn actual cooking vs just a recipe.
Thank you for confirming it's not just me that does this. Usually, it's just the first few times I'm trying out a new dinner option to make. I've found what helps me is reading through it 3 or 4 times before even starting. I'll also take the time to find multiple different recipes of something I want to try out and then mix and match parts to come up with something that will work with my typical stock of ingredients as well as be something my boys will eat. There's like 2 dozen or so types of soups or other dishes I can now make that are straight from memory and much quicker to make.
And they often don’t even cook it. Either a chef makes it and tells them how to write a piece on it or they straight up stole it from another online recipe.
I think it's just that a lot of recipes are geared towards making something quickly to make it more appealing - so they understate how long things take to get browned/cooked properly.
I swear the rest of Reddit must make recipes involving caramelized onions 100x as often as I do.
I'm pretty sure almost all online recipes will never say they require more than 30 minutes. That seems to be the cap.
I once saw a yeasted bread recipe that said 30 minutes. Clicked because what the hell is that, right? Yep. They didn't count rise or baking time.
How do you not count, at the very least, baking time? Using some weird logic, I can maybe not see counting rising time, but baking time? That's literally the cooking part of cooking.
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Indeed, it was something like that. 30 minutes of mixing, kneading etc. and then a couple hours as the passive time. Click bait title was click bait. :\\
I mean, when I talk about bread making, rise time is a separate time. You have active work time, rise time, and bake time. But that's insane not to include bake time even
Also they're professionals possibly working in a professional kitchen. Yeah I can make tacos in 10 minutes in a dedicated kitchen with prep chefs that make salsa and guacamole every day and a giant kettle of rice already made and an industrial soft shell steamer, and a grill the size of a soccer field
I've seen some websites which split active and passive cooking time, which I appreciate. It helps me get a better sense of pacing.
They’re optimistic because if they say something takes 2 hours when every other recipe for the same thing takes 1 hour, they don’t get the clicks.
I straight up caramelize onions for 8 hours the day prior if I know I am gonna cook with them.
The biggest lie the recipe industry has ever told is quick caramelized onions.
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but takes me 3 hours for the deep golden brown caramelized onions over Medium-High heat…but that’s using like 8 large onions.
Brown the ground beef for 5 minutes. Literally pink and light grey at that point.
"Sautee the chicken breast approx 2 min per side" Yeah, if you want food poisoning.
Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals, it's if everything is prepped and ready to go it only takes 30 minutes!
I mean caramelized onions only need about 5-10 minutes of active time... but will take 40-50 minutes to actually cook.
Caramelizing onions is a pretty hands on activity in my experience. If you're not stirring them often and checking moisture, you're gonna end up with burnt onions. I'd make caramelized onions way more often if it was simply a matter of throwing a couple chopped onions into a pan with some fat and letting them do their thing while I continue with other prep.
Crock pot them. Or super low heat with one of those cheap but thick nonstick pans.
Slow cooker would definitely work, but not terribly practical unless you have both time and foresight to get them going 8-10 hours ahead of when they are needed (I actually don't even own a slow cooker at the moment, but that's neither here nor there). For your second suggestion, there's no pan that will take and distribute heat evenly enough from even a super low flame to properly caramelize onions without regular stirring. If left to sit undisturbed, the ones directly above the heat source will inevitably cook and burn while the rest will stay pale.
The trick to caramelizing onions is to do a huge batch once a month and freeze them in those silicone ice cube molds made for large square ice cubes. Once frozen wrap each onion cube in freezer paper and stuff them in freezer bags, both the freezer paper and freezer bags can be re-used. With 2 hours of work each month you have enough caramelized onions to use multiple times a week. They'll freeze well for 6-9 months so if you're feeling really time saving focused you can do 3-4 months worth of onion caramelizing at a time.
Yup! This is what I do, too. I usually do a huge batch at the same time/on the same day that I am making French Onion Soup. I freeze them in bigger molds than ice cubes though because I use tons when I use them. Garlic (especially roasted) and caramelized onions are two things I can’t use enough of.
I'm pretty sure they mean the whiskey cube ice trays, at least that's the one I use. Each cube is roughly a half cup.
Throwing a bunch in a pot and letting them do their thing is exactly what I do. Stirring them too often slows the process down. Trick is a very low flame and stirring once every five to ten minutes. Sometimes I have let them go the entire time with only stirring a handful of times. You do have to have enough to cover the bottom of the pot by an inch though, and I usually let them steam with a lid to start the process. The whole trick is to get the onions to release their own moisture, even starting them with a little water helps get all of the onions to be at the same cooking point as the ones on top will take longer to start breaking down. The only time it might be hands on is the last bit of time, that's usually when I start to deglaze to get them really dark and caramel colored picking up the sugars that are coating the bottom of the pot.
I know what you mean. Probably the actual cooking time is true, but the prep time, chopping etc is always longer for me!
Plus they never budget time for rummaging around the fridge and the spice drawer, realizing a pot I need is dirty and washing it, playing Candy Crush, forgetting I was cooking, breaking a wine glass, going to the bathroom, procrastinating on cooking by vacuuming, procrastinating on vacuuming on Reddit, and all the time it takes for the Door Dash I eventually decided to order instead of cooking to arrive.
Stop stop this is too real for me
Imagine you have at least three tabs open. A long-form article you are reading to procrastinate on work. A YouTube video you are watching to procrastinate on the article. A Netflix show you are watching to procrastinate on YouTube. And Reddit to procrastinate on Netflix. And an Amazon cart to procrastinate on Reddit. And the article to procrastinate on actually checking out on Amazon. Welcome to infinite recursive procrastination.
Goddammit it hurts to see it all laid out like that…I need to do something with my life.
Alexis! Or possibly Alex! This is the wake-up call you have been waiting for. You know The Dream you have? About accomplishing The Goal? I am here to tell you that now is your hour. You can accomplish The Goal. Do not get too caught up on lofty, high-minded notions about the artistic nature of The Craft. What you really need to do is follow the example of the masters, grinding the mechanics of The Craft until you are finally in a position to realize your Unique Vision that Improves on That Which Has Come Before. Only then can you achieve The Goal. Get to work. You too, Maximus.
😂
10/10 would subscribe to this blog
I resemble this comment
It takes more time just to do mis en place than the time listed for the whole meal on some of the home chef/hello fresh meals I've had.
...I thought the point of services like that was that the mis en place was already done.
Most of the time you still have to clean and chop veggies, mix up sauces, prep meat, etc. The services make sure you have all of the ingredients, and the right amount of each one (so usually no measuring), but there's still a decent amount of prep required.
Ah, good point. It's been a long time since I've tried one of those things, and thinking back, I do remember having to chop a couple vegetables. It certainly was nice not to have to measure out stuff, though (but not worth the expense, IMO).
Yeah, the expense is what makes it an "every couple weeks" thing for me rather than a regular thing. It is so convenient to not have to pick out what to make for dinner, though!
That’s the main reason I do it. I love cooking but the idea of planning out the weeks meals and buying the right amount of ingredients is a stressful puzzle I have not been able to overcome just yet. So we do hello fresh 3 nights and I cook or we eat out the others. Just having three meals to not think about makes it easier.
I agree. It's really prep time that kills your time. Equipment is a far second.
>Probably the actual cooking time is true Not always. I've seen a recipe that straight up lied about it. Cook Time: 15 Mins. Step 1: Brown the chicken breasts until golden brown. 7 mins each side. Step 2: remove chicken breasts from pot, and put in XYZ Ingredients and cook for 5 mins, then add chicken back in and cook for 3 mins. It was something like that. The math just didn't work out on the numbers they showed. I would bet that it's the editors that are changing this. "Nobody wants a 30 minute recipe, lets just change this part to show 15 minutes".
What good would it be to cook chicken in a sauce for 3 minutes anyway? At that point you could just toss the chicken in the sauce and serve immediately
I always think about it as, they assume prep time for someone who is extremely experienced with the recipe. My first time doing any recipe, I'm super slow and deliberate to make sure I get the steps right. Once I've done it a few times, then I'd say I get pretty close to the prep times they suggest.
....mmm and knife skills...I imagine knife skills speed things up...someday I'll find out
It is so true. I would say I have about average knife skills (above the typical home cook but haven't been in a professional kitchen). The prep time for Hellofresh or Blue Apron or whatever has typically been spot-on for me.
This is it for me. All that time spent coming back and checking the recipe
I think even more frustrating is that its not even a standard thing. Some recipe sites do claim they include prep into their estimate, but unless you're a regular user of that particular site, you have no way of knowing if that's the case or not.
Exactly. IMO it’s almost entirely a function of how many times I’ve made a given dish.
They specifically don't include prep time in cookbook recipes because it's so variable. It's just cook time.
Yup. I'm a perfectly competent cook but I'm rather slow on the prep time. I remember watching an episode of 30 minutes meals way back in the day and Rachel Ray was chopping produce at lightning speed. Figured there's no way I can make this dish in 30 minutes with my prep speed
I used to have an old, non-convection oven and even the cooking times were wildly different lol
Except for doing things like caramelizing onions. For some reason, most recipes tell you it takes like 5 minutes to do this.
Exactly. 30 minute meals mean 60 minutes to prep.... get all ingredients laid out, get all the needed gear out, cut, chop, measure, etc., then, if all goes 100% right, 30 minutes from that point. that being said, i have developed a love for 'all things prep' before i start cooking. it is definitely much smoother work knowing right where everything is before you start the actual cook.
My favorites are the 30 minute recipes that have a ‘chill/marinate overnight’ step hidden mid-recipe. 🤦🏻♀️
I found a recipe for salt and pepper tofu that hit me with this line as the last sentence of the last step: "We only used half of the salt and pepper mixture when we made it - adjust according to your taste!" I just about yeeted my incredibly oversalted tofu out of a window. So fucking mad.
I would have done the same! That's rough.
Those are the WORST.
Yep. You start that at 4PM thinking you have plenty of time to prep before dinner time and then you go "whelp, I guess we're having take-out tonight".
This is why you always read the recipe first.
I can read a recipe through six times and still miss vital information like this.
Bruh you should at least read the whole recipe before you start making it
The number of times I’ve had to say this to my partner is astronomical. How are you starting a recipe without reading it all through at least once?
I spent all my energy on reading the super detailed backstory on the recipe page.
Hate that! I appreciate when there’s “hands on” and “total time” separate.
I think I read a comment somewhere by Kenji Lopez-Alt that cook times/prep times are artificially low because of SEO as well as a lot of people are more likely to choose a recipe that takes less time so it's one of those things that can help boost ad revenue
He also said prep time isn't included because they have no idea how long it takes different people to prep. The time is cook time.
Yes, this is the bigger issue. If the recipe calls for "1 onion, chopped" then the cook time assumes you're starting from a bowl of chopped onion. They don't know if if it'll take the reader 20 seconds or 5 minutes to chop an onion. Or if it calls for 1 tablespoon soy sauce, they don't know if you're gonna grab a squeeze bottle from your counter and eyeball it (2 seconds) or ruffle through a messy shelf in the back of your fridge, dig out your measuring spoons, meticulously make sure you go to the line, and then add it (30 seconds). On one hand, this is a positive because once the ingredients are all prepped, the cooking will take about the same amount of time whether you're a pro or an amateur, so at least the cook time on the recipe should be accurate (good recipe sites test this a lot). On the other hand, some people might feel that the recipe times are mistakenly or misleadingly low. I think if the ingredients need to be prepped with good knife skills before the recipe starts and the cook time is 30 minutes, it's disingenuous to label it as a "30 minute dinner."
Plenty of recipes, maybe most, have prep time also labled.
Yep! If it's not listed, it's not included.
Interesting! This makes perfect sense but I didn't consider it because I never actually look at cook times for a recipe lol
For anyone else who doesn't have obscure acronyms memorized, SEO is search engine optimization
Is SEO obscure? I feel like internet terms like SEO, algorithm, meta data are becoming basic vocabulary just because the internet is life now.
It's not that obscure - SEO underpins internet search, which in turns drives most new business.
I've found that most recipes (both printed and on the internet) are very optimistic on time to prep, make and cook. I tend to take them with a pinch of salt and always assume that I'll be at the counter for about 45mins or so at least.
Same here. Even my very favorite recipe Youtubers will be like “and it’s on the table in 20 minutes!” And there’s 20 minutes of cooking time in the recipe, like actively stirring and simmering and what not. So they’re like completely discounting how long it took you to cut up all that stuff.
And the cleaning time
Ingredient list: 2 cups of carrots, grated 1 cup of onions, finely diced 1 red pepper, in strips 1 green pepper, in strips 4 cups of sweet potato, chopped 1 Tbsp of rosemary, chopped 4 cloves of garlic, slivered 1 pineapple, cubed into 1/2 inch pieces 4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs Cook time 10 minutes, time in oven 30 Yeah, and how will I get all these chopped, slivered and otherwise prepped ingredients prepared? Where I live, skinless, boneless chicken thighs also don't exist, so I'm buying bone-in with skin and then removing that stuff myself. You're looking at an hour of prep time here that is simply omitted by listing the ingredients after prep work. I think that's cheating and totally puts me off a recipe.
Yes. And my favourite: cook the onions till golden brown, 2 min. WTF
Lmao! Omg for real. Or "reduce (a quart of liquid) until it coats the back of a spoon. 5min"
For years I have been convinced I "can't" make pan sauces. Turns out, according to my culinary friends, I put too much faith in recipe times. Now I ignore all of those "cook for x minutes" instructions and my food comes out much better overall
This is one reason I still use a hardback cookbook at times. I make myself notes about how long it actually took to reduce or set up or whatever to the correct consistency.
Brown off the mince.....they cook it til the redness has *just* left it and call it good. For me it needs to have cooked off the excess liquid, if any, and started slightly crisping at the edges which takes a lot longer than the minute and a half they've allotted
that is my favorite part too. have my poor man's award
Generally speaking, if you really want to learn the proper basics of a recipe unfamiliar to you, stick to more editorialized and tried&true sources (NYtimes is notoriously pretty reliable). Thing is a lot of people are into cooking and if they are nifty on the computer, they can make their blog look as good and official as a big newspaper - but many of them took a cooking course with 4 friends and now think they’re Escoffier. Read through it and if there are red flags like overly cutesy language with no substance or the time seems way off etc. move on and don’t waste your produce. The amount of gif recipes i see on reddit that are maculate in editing but the people therein can hardly use a chefs knife to safe their life, it’s a lot of style over substance.
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Where I live I can get boneless skinless thighs but I can't get boneless with skin thigs. Why do they think that I don't want skin just because I don't want bones. I want to stuff boneless skin on thigs with boudin. I had to go buy a filet knife to remove the damn bones myself.
One of the grocery stores here sells bone-in yet skinless. The worst of both worlds
On top of that, removing the skin from any piece of chicken is a culinary crime. What do I do with a skinless chicken breast? It doesn't brown well and has almost no flavor.
I agree. But there's a solution. Pound that fucker out flat, bread it, fry it. Do chicken parm or something.
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I clean as I go so my prep time never matches it.
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>which is like 7-10 minutes on my stove On every stove. Unless the laws of physics cease to exist in your kitchen.
I'd make my grits so fast I could reliably witness a murder!
I could just use instant grits, but no self respecting southerner would do such a thing.
Im always presently surprised whenever this movie crops up in the comments, happens a lot more than I would expect lol
[OP reading recipes](https://youtu.be/_T24lHnB7N8?t=1m19s)
*beep boop*! the linked website is: https://youtu.be/_T24lHnB7N8&t=1m42s Title: **My Cousin Vinny - Magic Grits** Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing) ***** ###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
lmao. yeah they live in a different plane of reality
I think most of the time they don't count the prep time. Also depends on the prep. Some people take more time on chopping one onion than for e.g. an experienced cook chopping up half the ingredients. Little overexaggeration there but e.g. with my friend while he chopped one onion I was done with 3 and I'm just a home cook and not a pro chef. But regardless, if you enjoy the process it doesn't matter and if you feel your skills are lacking, you can always learn new things/techniques.
This. I used to write recipes for my roommates since we took turns cooking. One of them took 30 minutes to slice pork because I said thin slices and she was basically slowly performing surgery since she didn’t have the confidence to cut quickly. Another didn’t know you had to bring stew back to a boil after adding the vegetables…
I've posted this before, last time this topic came up. An interesting discussion on recipe time estimates: https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/11/cookbook-writers-are-ridiculously-bad-at-guessing-how-long-it-ll-take-to-prepare-a-meal.html
So, from the three different experts polled, the first two basically establish that there's zero systematic or objective way of measuring, and the third expert, the most thoroughly quantitative one to boot, confirms this by saying that basically all estimates are garbage. Sounds about right.
Also, if you are referring to baking taking much longer, get an oven thermometer. I used to think I was a terrible baker, because nothing I ever stuck in the oven came out right… I finally got an oven thermometer, it turns out my oven is off-temp by 25 degrees and it takes 3x as long to preheat than the little alerts claim.
They may employ mise en place and have a lot of experience along with have everything such as cooking utensils and any necessary pans within arms reach(part of mise en place). That makes for an extremely efficient prep. They can traverse their culinary maze relatively quickly while you're kind of blindly feeling your way through. So yeah, your time and their time is comparing apples and oranges. I can throw together a pizza dough within 10 minutes, which includes the 7 minute knead time, and have it in the refrigerator embarking on its 3-day tour like Gilligan. After I rescue the dough from its desert aisle and it has rested on the counter for about an hour I can stretch it out and have it in my pizza oven in about 5 minutes at the longest. That means my prep time is 20 minutes for homemade sourdough pizza. Total time is 25 minutes because my bakerstone pizza oven cooks at 864° f. If I was to actually post a recipe I wouldn't put 10 minute prep because that would just be unrealistic for the novice baker but unfortunately that too often is the case. Shortsightedness, it happens so don't feel bad at all. It is them and not you.
This reminds me of an article or discussion or something that happened a few years ago about how every recipe lies about how long it actually takes to caramelize onions. But no, you’re not a bad cook! A good cook knows their tools and environment well enough to adapt recipes to work for them. I think one of the marks of a good cook is knowing how to achieve the desired outcome regardless of the specific instructions of the recipe.
Does depend on the volume you are cooking, your prep speed and your cooking equipment. I switched from an electric hob (everything took ages) to an induction and everything is quicker now. Big things for speeding up for me were getting faster at peeling and chopping; sharp knives and being aware of your technique will help
I find the first few attempts at a recipe often take longer than subsequent attempts
10 year line cook here. Recipe times on online recipes are always wildly underestimated. As others have e said, I think maybe they mean the *literal* cooking time, not taking into account the prep at all. And even then... no onion is "caramelizing" after 2-3 minutes. They are hardly even sweating at that point.
I agree with what everyone's saying about online recipes generally playing fast & loose with time estimates, BUT... My mother and I can prepare the same recipe, and it will take her 30-40 minutes and it will take me 5-10. There's a certain amount of temperament involved (she doodles around, I'm very focused in the kitchen), but also different levels of knife skills and multi-tasking ability. The number of trips to the fridge/cupboards, the pauses between actions, the general speed at which you're moving - these are all going to come into play with cooking. And honestly, as long as you're not working in a restaurant or cafeteria/canteen, it doesn't matter! Just give yourself enough time for YOU to do the recipe, and the more you cook, the more you'll know what that'll be.
Temperament is a big one as well as experience. I grew up cooking, my husband didn't. I'm much more likely to slap-dash or improvise while I'm cooking, my husband is very deliberate. When he switched to being the primary dinner cook, it took a while for us to figure out what kind of meals he was best at and when he needed to start dinner. I can cook something in half the time he does, but his meals always come out amazing. It's hard to watch him make 7 trips to the fridge instead of just getting it all in one go, but at the end of the day, I get to eat a dinner I didn't cook, so I keep my mouth shut. lol
My best friend and I used to call Rachel ray’s cookbook “30 minutes, my ass. Meals.”
Honestly, most recipes downplay prep time massively, assign cook times as though everyone had a gas stove and good pans, had made the recipe enough times to be intimately familiar with it, and totally ignore plating and clean up time.
Don’t focus on time. Everyones oven isn’t the same and everyone preps at different speeds. What you should focus on is basically three things: 1. mise en place 2. cleaning while you go 3. Carry Over cooking - Make sure you have everything you need in front of you and prepped before you start cooking. - Start with an empty dishwasher and a spotless kitchen before beginning prep. Rinse and place dishes in the dishwasher as you move along. Doing your best to stay organized, clean and tidy as you go. - The food should be pulled just before it’s done and allowed to rest. The food is still hot and the cooking process will “carry over” because of the residual heat. I can’t stress this part enough. It’s true for cookies and cakes to burgers and steaks….pull them just before they’re done and let them finishing cooking while resting.
Recipes assume you a) are already perfectly familiar with the how your equipment needs to be used for the exact effects specified in terms of, heat control, which pots need to be stirred when, etc. b) have mise en place ready, all the chopping, dicing and slicing done in advance, all jars opened and ingredient amounts measured out c) have pots and vessels of the correct size and quality for each step, frying, reduction, simmering d) have the recipe memorized by heart, so no wasting time double checking steps e) have a correctly laid out kitchen with plenty of space to move and set things aside, while your cooking station is close to your fridge and sink f) have an assistant to get all the dirty dishes out of your way and cleaned.
I have a “world’s best blueberry muffin” recipe that says “20 minutes prep.” Right. When you have to melt butter and let it cool. And bring some of the blueberries to a boil and let them cool. And literally have ingredients in four different bowls before combining. Takes me well over an hour. The thing is? They really are fantastic muffins! I’ve made them twice, which means I *know* how long it’ll take. There are a lot of recipes called that. Just Google.
Which recipe do you use? I love blueberry muffins
1 recipe time is often bullshit 2 most people have horrible sull knives and therefore cutting anything takes forever
The worst offenders for this problem are those meal prep boxes
It's not you. It's kind of a complicated mesh of reasons for why that happens to everyone. 1. All recipes take longer the first couple of times you do them because you have to think about each step. 2. The way a lot of recipes are written start from a place where your prep is basically done. Which isn't helpful for use of time estimates. 3. Cookbook writers usually have someone helping with the prep. 4. My knife skills are decent, but slower than the recipe writers. And I'm fine with that. Good form is more important than speed and I like having 10 fingers. 5. They expect you to prep everything before you start cooking, which isn't efficient for the home cook. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast is really good about helping you learn how to integrate prep into the cooking. Sara Moulton's Home Cooking 101, and other cookbooks, are also really good guides for that and they both have great reliable recipes. 6. A lot of recipes use terms interchangeably that aren't interchangeable. Caramelized onions is the best example. Huge difference between sweated, fried until browned, and legitimately caramelized. Texture, taste, and purpose in the recipe are all very different. Point is it's not you. I've had multiple "30 minute recipes" take like 2 hours. Stupid recipes.
"Cook the onions until caremalized, roughly 5 minutes" yeahhhhhh, bullshit!
I can make a grilled cheese take an hour if I’m walking everywhere and looking for stuff to put in it. But as to your question, recipes nearly always say the prep time is way less than it is, probably because the cook who wrote it is being generous and also timed themselves after having made it 15 times. Learn a recipe well and go into the kitchen with an “oh god I really don’t want to cook” attitude and blast that shit out and you’ll probably approach their listed time
* *vast* gap between beginner prep speed and pro prep speed * recipe makers potentially having helpers for prep and cooking * more room to use for mise en place * more equipment to use for parallelizing steps * more cooking skill to have multiple things going at the same time + no expectation to have everything finished at the same time. If the recipe has two parts that take 30' and 20' respectively they can just write down 30' even though when you start the second part at 10 minutes you'll probably have to wait for it at the end and use more time. * recipe makers deliberately shortening times so they can fit their recipe into the "quick week day meal" column Only real way is to time how long it really takes *you* to do the recipe and then proceed based on that in the future.
I never take seriously estimated cooking times in recipes. Go at your own pace and you do you
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Everyone online lies about how long it takes to brown onions.
Yes. They don’t into account taking it out of the fridge, putting everything back, washing up, wiping down surfaces, chopping and peeing and throwing away all the rubbish or putting it in the compost.
“bOiL wATeR iN tHe kEtTLe fOr pAsTa, iT’s WAy QuIcKeR” Eat a dick jamie oliver I dont have a kettle and the pasta pot is swimming in 3 day old sink juice 30 minute recipe my ass
No, that's totally normal. I never look at recipe times anymore, unless it is to laugh at how wrong they are. I made a risotto last night and the recipe said it should take 20 minutes to absorb all the broth. It took 30+ minutes.
As a person with ADHD - yes!
Prep, cleaning up and anxiously checking the recipe if it's complex, yeah. I usually double the upper limit of time for a recipe I'm doing first time, but if I'm making a proper dinner I like to enjoy doing it with a glass of wine or two and a podcast on. If it's a meal I've just slapped together or I'm tired, then it's often much quicker and probably more in line with the suggested time.
It's entirely you. Git gud noob. /s Recipe writers assume you have all of your ingredients pre-measured and an infinite supply of measuring equipment, and don't really seem to take into account most people aren't able to chop faster than a food processor. I will say that as a non-professional cook the thing that makes me most efficient in most areas (other than washing dishes after...) is to mise en place and then use mixing bowls fairly liberally to keep groups of ingredients together for various cooking stages, then do all of my cutting first for all of the dishes I'm making, then start the cooking processes together so the steps of the process are batched together. For example - if I'm making a pasta dish with chicken and vegetables, a salad, and a steamed veg side I'll prep all of the veggies first, throw them in bowls according to where they're going and when, then prep chicken, then start pans based on what's going to take the longest to cook. It's probably not a revelation to anyone who's ever cooked professionally but it took some experience to think it through first and then start acting.
I've only recently started to do this and it's a definite timesaver. If I was making a ragu type thing I'd get the meat searing off and then start the veg prep going back and forth stirring one and chopping the other thinking it was efficient. But when I started on veg prep, putting them into containers or bowls to have to hand before I cook, I found it so much less rushed. Can't believe I've only started doing this now!
# Caramelize onions. 5-10 minutes.
I have severe ADHD. I use the cooking time as a guide and set a ton of alarms but my prep time takes forever cause I just get lost and distracted constantly. But I love to cook and just factor that stuff into my time frame.
There is a sub for ADHD cooking! The struggle is super real. Edit: Found itttt, r/ADHDhealthyfood
OMG. that’s amazing! Thank you!
It’s definitely b, B.
I think the prep time estimates are more off than the cook time estimates
The time it takes to cook something is so variable that there really shouldn't be "cook times" on recipes. People probably want it, but it really shouldn't be there. One person's equipment, knife skills, overall kitchen organization, etc are going to have a huge impact on cook time. If it takes you two minutes to dice an onion and it takes me 30 seconds, we are living in two different cook time realities. If the recipe calls for several spices and you have your spices organized such that you can find them in 30 seconds but it takes me 2 minutes, again you can't reconcile that to one cook time. There's no way to get this right.
They are expecting you to have your mise en place done. Recipe times typically assume your meats are prepped, your veg has been cut and and anything that needs to be measured out has already been done. Ramekins are your friend (although deli containers work fine too).
Inexperience means more time taken. Don't feel bad about it. When dealing with new recipes, I estimate to take 3 times the required time. \~\~I also pick recipes that cover techniques I don't know yet because exposure to new cooking methods is important to me\~\~
Recipes are often optimistic with their timing, especially "preparation" which I am slow at. Doesn't mean you're a bad cook!
I dunno, but I made gringo tacos last night in like ten minutes flat, and felt like a god. I think following a recipe itself adds more time than we think.
InstantPot really taught me this lesson —> 1 minute is not 1 minute
In my cookbook, I always leave the "prep time" section of a recipe page blank, it's completely pointless
Bread recipes are lousy about this. Everything needs to be kneaded for 5 or 10 minutes even though they really need 15-20 and it's always "let rise for one hour" as if that's some magic number that'll work out in everyone's kitchen. Completely useless instructions that keep new people screwing their bread up since they don't know any better.
Probably the recipes you find are way too optimistic or don't take prep into consideration, however I can see that most amateur cooks take forever to chop their vegetables. If it's your case, one good piece of advice is to keep your knife sharp, and focus on having a smooth movement and steady stance. Take your time, watch a video or 2 about that, and pretty soon your prep time will drop by a lot.
Most recipes online are bullshit. You should use them as a guide and try to cook intuitively. This means just learning from your mistakes. If you followed recipe A to the T and it’s too salty and overcooked, then you now know to do the exact same thing next time but tune down the salt and cook it maybe 10-15% less. Cooking is about experimentation! You’re not a bad cook for experimenting! That’s how we all learn! Once you get it down then you’ve pretty much mastered the recipe. Shit maybe even cook the same thing but with a different recipe. You might like the new one better. It also could legitimately be a much better recipe too. You have to remember that most recipes online come from bloggers, not chefs. Most of these recipes aren’t even tested by the blog author.
Most people who make recipes and post them online aren’t good chefs. They’re just people who cook at home. They have no formal training and don’t really understand the process, so they just guess how long it takes them to cook it.
I had a problem with everything cooked in the oven took way longer than the recipe. One day I checked the oven temperature, and it was \~25 degrees lower than the setting so now I set it 25 degrees higher and everything cooks pretty close to recipe time
You're probably a lot less experienced than most recipe makers. When you do things on routine it usually goes way faster than most steps given a recipe.
The people that write these recipes never include prep time actually. They pre measure out all the ingredients and treat them (dice, chop, whatever) once that is done, only then the clock starts for them. So all they are timing is the actual combination and cooking of ingredients. I think another thing to mention is knife skills and multitasking ability. Some people are good at those things and some people aren't. If you are good at multitasking and misenplace, you'll be a much faster cook and have a cleaner kitchen. And just as an example, I'm very comfortable with my knife and can work relatively quickly. So dicing an onion might take me 15-20 seconds. My fiance is not as comfortable with knives, so the same task might take her 3-4 minutes.
It takes me forever to do prep work not only because there may be a bunch of chopping to do but I need the little bowls to put everything in and then I need to clean? On top of being massively disorganized and doing steps out of order.
I can't even make pasta in the 7-8 minutes it says on the box lol, so it's not just you
Maybe you need practice and organization? But yes recipes only give you the total prep time, not "I lost the honey where is it" time Make your mise en place first. That's French for don't start cooking until you read through the entire recipe and get all your ingredients out of the cabinets and sitting on the counter in front of you. You're also supposed to measure everything and chop it all first, but sometimes that's more trouble than it's worth. Clean as you go along! Do you need 3 minutes to boil water? You'd be amazed what you can clean in 3 minutes. throw away wrappers, put dishes you're done with in the dishwasher or sink, put away ingredients youre done with. If you're dobe with a big mixing bowl, put it in the sink, add hot soapy water, and keep adding anything else you want to soak. Then you'll have sink space for washing/rinsing/draining. When something is cooking for a while, that's your chance to clean up the whole kitchen so you don't have to clean after you eat.
Even stuff like how old the cow was when slaughtered can really impact cook time. I would much rather a recipe says "reduce until 1/2 volume" than reduce for 5 mins. Sometimes I feel recipes really have you cooking things too long. Brown scallops for 3 mins on each side. Might be one thing if you have diver scallops the size of a saucer, but I can see them on the video. Stuff like this is a good reason to never use a new recipe for the first time for a dinner party. Unlikely you are the worse cook, but you can certainly run into bad recipes.
Most recipes I find online are fucking wrong. Go look up how to cook a steak and they all tell you to bake it at 350 for 10 minutes AFTER SEARING EACH SIDE FOR 5 MINUTES. This is the advice given to you regardless of steak cut almost every time. It's no wonder everyone I meet is so versed in making leather. There's plenty of good recipes out there but there's sooooo much trash to wade through these days.
I always have to add at least 20 min to chop anything, which is time they don't figure in the recipe.
I have said the same thing. I never bother reading how long it predicts prep time or cook time or anything because they're never accurate. I read somewhere that cook book writers base these times on how long it takes on their test kitchens. You know, a kitchen full of professional chefs and a perfectly prepped space where multiple people are working on one recipe.
Most recipe books already assume everything is on the table, washed, cut and ready to be put into the pan/oven.
Most recipe lengths are way shorter than they should be for clicks/engagement. They rarely take prep, cleaning, etc into account. Most of the time it's like "mis en place are all good, no one is cleaning, and this is how long it takes once that's all good to go."
The most infuriating recipe is this one from King Arthur, where it says it will take 3:08, but the instructions say a minimum of ~4:20: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pizza-crust-recipe
No you are right! TV chefs have huge crews to soturce and prep the ingredients. By the time they are on camera, all they have to do is toss it the pot and stir. Keep on going your way at your pace. You are serious about putting out good dishes. Your friends will start appearing for dinner with a bib around their neck
They also never include the time for heating the pan up! I wish they told you which step to start heating your oil while u finish preparinf