I trained myself to wash as I cook because otherwise I'll get distracted and leave the mess behind for days.
Cleaning as you go is the secret to making cooking fun, more or less.
I'm trying to teach my son this concept. He loves to cook, but he just dumps everything in the sink as he cooks, uses a new utensil for everything, etc. You don't need a new spoon every time you taste your spaghetti sauce.
It's even more fun to cook when you know a parent is going to clean up the mess after your Iron Chef fantasy.
If you find a way to teach this lesson let me know.
My wife loves to cook and is very good at it, but she's purely focused on the food. I try to clean as she goes behind her and she keeps shooing me away because I'm in way. However if I don't then she'll start getting annoyed that the sink is full. It's a delicate balance
I used to despise washing dishes. Then I opened a food biz, and spent many hours washing dishes and listening to audio books.
Now I don't mind washing dishes. There's something very satisfying about tackling a pile of dirty dishes and having them all shiny and clean at the end. It's very Zen.
It helps that with great experience comes great speed. When others look at a destroyed kitchen and see hours of drudgery, I know that it will be beautiful in 15 minutes.
How do you do this without burning the food?
Better heat and process management. If I have 2 minutes to toast almonds, I won't be scrubbing a pan. But, if I have to cut veg and then saute, I'll do all my prep and then start cleaning between stirs/pan heating.
Also, I love getting all my prep out of the way and then starting cooking. I immediately have much better process management to clean between cooking activities
that's why you cook the whole bag of pasta and put the rest in the fridge for the next day, make 1kg of beef for gulash or bolognaise... make at least twice the amount to have something to reheat. You can also put in zip bags and freeze if you want to have more days between eating the same thing
Look at this fancy pants with their high "moderation and future planning" concepts.
I make the whole bag, I EAT THE WHOLE BAG
Nah man. I do this and promptly forget about a Ziploc bag or two in the freezer for a few months. Finding a bag of chili that will be ready to eat in minutes on a day you don't feel like cooking or ordering out (again), is like Christmas morning.
Lol yeah, putting leftovers in my freezer is a sure fire way to ensure that I will never see that food again.
This is the attitude we need in this thread. I nominate you King of the ADHD cooks for 24 minutes. Long may you reign in funny. ;)
Maybe try a slow cooker. If you find a few recipes you like and prepare what you can in larger batches and save some for next time (for example if it uses a collection of spices, measure out multiple recipes worth of all of the spices and store them (pre-combined) in spice jars), you can get the prep time down to a few minutes each time you want to cook it. Slow cookers have the added benefit of not having to worry about taking it out of the oven at the right time or whathaveyou - when it finishes cooking, it'll just keep your food warm until you're ready to eat it. This also keeps the washing to a minimum - it's just the slow cooker insert and your bowl + utensils. As an added bonus, you'll get multiple days worth of food out of one time cooking.
Rant about kitchen appliances:
People should learn to use the things they most probably already have in their kitchen.
slow cooker is just a tiny pot shaped low temperature oven with a timer
Air fryer is a tiny oven with a fan
Why do people get so hyped about a smaller and more limited version of the thing they already have? Just use your oven which most likely already has all these features. I haven't seen an electric oven without a fan or without a timer in my lifetime
I have a full size convection oven. I also have a really fancy countertop convection oven I got last year for like $120. I rarely use the regular oven anymore.
Why?
For one thing my full size oven is gas, and I’d rather use electric. My stove and furnace are the only gas appliances I have, but I try to run them as little as possible. For another, I live alone and often cook smaller portions. I don’t need to heat up that much oven for just a burrito or whatever, that’s wasteful.
And finally, my countertop convection oven has a suite of settings and features my standing oven can’t remotely compete with, and it can still cook something the size of whole chicken/roast and a side dish, just like my big oven. For example it has a meat probe that automatically shuts off the heating element when the internal temp reaches whatever it needs to be for the meat type and cook level you want. Perfect every time, no hassle, no guesswork, no adhd memory wipe leading to overcooked food. It also has a bunch of preset modes, and any changes I make to them get saved in the memory until I change or reset them, so when I find something cooks better at a different temp or time I can just save that on a setting I don’t use, and have to ready for next time.
It’s not that I don’t know how to use my oven. I do. I bought it myself 12 years ago and know exactly what it’s capable of with its luxurious 6 buttons and basic features. That’s why I wanted the countertop model.
My slow cooker is the same sort of thing - it’s an 8-in-1 pressure cooker, rice cooker, slow cooker, yogurt maker, etc. it does a lot of things and I use it frequently. It’s worth the hype.
Alright, now you tell me how I'm supposed to put a fan of my oven and how I'm supposed to make it preheat 10 times faster.
Why do people get so hyped about a smaller and more ~~limited~~ specialized version of the thing they already have?
Because they're better and/or easier to do specific things with.
I haven't seen an electric oven without a fan or without a timer in my lifetime
I'm 42 and have never had one WITH a timer, but congratulations, I guess 🤷
Fact is that some of us lack certain resources such as energy, attention stamina, or time to make everything using standard equipment.
I for one know I'd never get my super healthy post-workout smoothie made without my nutribullet, or eat much cauliflower and skinless chicken breast (when I can afford it) without my air fryer.
I'm not knowledgeable about air fryers, so I can't really comment there, but slow cookers / crock pots are fantastic and in my opinion, should be in everyone's kitchen. Maybe I'm biased, though, because I really like soups and stews and sauces and things, which they're great for. Not things you'd cook in an oven, and my stovetop at least doesn't have any kind of timer mechanism.
I find that my air fryer leaves things much crisper than a regular oven, even one with a fan (which my current one doesn’t have and I’m not replacing right now because I want to redo the entire soviet era kitchen with modern furniture and integrated appliances). It also heats up to 200 degrees in under a minute vs nearly 10 minutes for the big oven.
It was a great convenience buy. I barely use the big oven now, only for things that don’t fit in the air fryer. And for some things I use the wood-powered oven instead.
Why are you taking 2 hours to cook every meal? Surely, you don't mean every meal every day, right?
People ask why I triple every recipe. This is why.
I have finally rediscovered my love for cooking. Here's what I do:
Don't follow the recipe. The chef can't write and the writer can't cook. A lot of it is nonsense. If you think you know better, you do.
Do whatever you want. Don't oversalt it or burn it and everything else can be fixed with more cookery.
Don't cook for 2 hours unless you are having fun goofing around in the kitchen for 2 hours or are making a holiday dish everyone's been wanting all year.
Learn all the shortcuts and try your own.
Eat while you're cooking to see if it's the way you want it and use all those spices and sauces to see what they do.
Easy mode: To make anything delicious, add salt, oil/fat, and acid. That will make everything but burned or oversalted stuff into edible. Also, pepper is somehow underrated despite being everywhere and in everything.
Don't eat it in 10 minutes. You won't digest it properly and it will add to your stress rather than relieving it. Take your time eating; the people making you rush are the problem not the food.
Every time this is posted I am going to point out that if you take 2 hours for cooking every time, you are doing something wrong. 1 hour is maybe more realistic but for a lot of meals I make I don't need more than 30-40 minutes.
Also, if you finish your meal in 10 minutes there is also an opportunity to slow down your eating a bit.
I don't understand recipes that are like "yo this will take 30 minutes to prepare".
I'm not the Steve mcqueen of chopping things, haha. It might take me 10 minutes just to get all of the stuff I'll need out and ready to begin - pull the onions and potatoes out of the shed, get the meat from the freezer, get the pressure cooker out and plug it in, make sure the workspace and knives are ready to go, grab a bowl for to collect the compost refuse, wash hands, etc.
Then there's all the actual prep. Peel the onions and potatoes, wash the dirt off them, chop them, etc etc, maybe the garlic needs crushing in that little garlic press, maybe the ginger needs grating, maybe the spices need measuring out, etc etc, and while I don't feel slow, my chopping and such isn't at restaurant chef lightning speeds.
I also just generally don't rush - rushing leads to mistakes which, when cooking, can lead to injury or wasted food. I go at a comfortable pace, not slow, but not rushing.
If a recipe says 30 minute prep I'll assume it'll take me more like a hour. If it's a recipe I've made many times and I don't have to check the recipe and try to follow it properly, then yeah, more like 45 minutes.
But I swear, all those recipe times are assuming you've got all your ingredients and tools and everything sat in front of you already washed, maybe even peeled, and ready to go, haha.
I've been focusing on cooking more simply. the goal is fewer ingredients, less time and effort, more appreciation for simple flavor and quality ingredients
I do 1 pan dishes, whether the recipes like it or not.
pro tip: try cooking for 2 days or more at once
OMG yasss
Kids: Can you make pizza. Sure go get one out of the garage. No we want your pizza.
Flattered/exhausted: yeah sure
Bowl to bloom the yeast, mixer bowl, mixer, dough hook, counter, cutting board, cast iron pan, convection oven, grater, stovetop, cooling rack, pizza cutter, other counter. Fridge space for 2 days cold ferment.
It's fucking good, but OMFG, I die a little every time.
This is why I have mastered the microwave. Once I get near that thing im basically gordan ramsey, minus the good tasting food. But food is food
Can relate
😌 my girlfriend is not understanding that
The lighter side of ADHD
