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The author states switching from cooking to washing dishes is a huge context switch and a waste of time...I disagree. Everyone who cooks efficiently is constant

• mulmen 6y ago
  In covid times I have been teaching myself how to cook, basically from nothing. It takes me forever to do anything. Chopping an onion takes what feels like an eternity. Recipes that claim “5 minutes of prep” are more like 20 minutes for me. It can be very discouraging. What you describe is definitely something that comes with experience. Like using vim effectively. I’m improving but it literally took a once in a century global pandemic to overcome the initial learning curve.
  • ufo 6y ago
    To be honest, the times listed on recipe websites are often too optimistic. That said, for chopping it really helps to have a sharp knife. A dull knife takes longer to do the job and it's also more likely to cause an accident.
    • kadoban 6y ago
      Times listed on recipe websites can go beyond optimisic as well and into just plain being physically impossible. One example I remember: https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-...
    • retzkek 6y ago
      > for chopping it really helps to have a sharp knife. A dull knife... is also more likely to cause an accident. This is true, but sharp knives also require good handling skills. If someone has been using dull knives their whole life they will almost certainly cut themselves if given a sharp knife, unless they are also re-trained on how to use them. Watch an episode of "Worst cooks in America" and count how many hands Ann has drawn on with a red Sharpie.
  • soared 6y ago
    It’s fun to test the same recipe, but just cut the onion differently each time. It shows you how purposeful, or not, you need to be.
  • violetgarden 6y ago
    Same!! I cannot do things like “while x is boiling, chop the vegetables.” I have to get everything prepped before I cook because I’m not skilled enough yet to be able to multitask.
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      I think this is quite common. Don't let it stress you out. Context switching is something we all have to do from time to time. You can't decide to sit down and review all of the code you'll ever be sent to review in your life. It would be nice to block off a month and knock that task out with great temporal locality. But, much of the code you need to review won't be sent until a few years from now, so you just can't. You can't make an infinitely large batch. Context switching makes sense when the cost of the switch is less than the time saved by doing the switch. For a beginner cook or someone whose knife skills aren't that great, maybe the cost of the switch is very high or the benefit is relatively low. Or maybe the window of idle time is not sufficient to accomplish the critical work. In this case, you just have to move the critical work earlier into the process and accept some down time. That being said, one thing I have found is that if I'm really FOCUSING on cooking, sometimes the idle moments are larger and the context switching costs are less than I had though, and maybe I can mix some prep in with cooking. The problem comes in when you're constantly checking your phone or chatting or whatever in between the cooking steps. That can really slow you down.
    • taurath 6y ago
      Many many of the recipes out there are terrible for exactly this reason and you have to read and reread the recipe at least a few times before starting. Plus the whole recipe internet is kinda a SEO cesspool which doesn’t prioritize good recipes.
      • yoz-y 6y ago
        Evaluating and bubbling up good recipes is hard though. Everyone’s tastes differ and the telling thing is that comments sections are always littered with stuff like “I loved the recipe. I just removed half the sugar, replaced apples with lemon and cooked it for twice as long”
  • distantaidenn 6y ago
    Taking the time to learn the basics of cooking pays back exponentially. In addition to the health and costs benefits, I find it extremely cathartic. And anecdotal, but I love the look on my friends and partner's face when they are enjoying a dish I've made. With a few basic skills you can whip up so many tasty dishes. My little secret: a homemade white sauce seafood pasta. It's embarrassingly easy to make, and wows my guests every-time.
    • patrickdavey 6y ago
      Care to share your embarrassingly easy recipe? :)
  • sjg007 6y ago
    You can buy prechopped onions either fresh or frozen. Also there’s the smashy oxo onion chopper thing but it works better for garlic really.
    • ycombobreaker 6y ago
      I used to have the smashy oxo chopper. For a beginner cook it is great. I found that it produces inconsistent sizes for anything besides "mince" so yeah, garlic works, or onions for salsa. Nowadays I would recommend taking a knife course (or at least some youtube studying) and using the chopping time as a break from thinking about work. Prep work can be cathartic, and even if time-consuming it is not time-sensitive. Edit: realize my comment sounds negative about that chopper. while I don't use it anymore, it's cheap enough and worth trying if you are on the fence or don't enjoy the prepwork.
  • taeric 6y ago
    The prep time doesn't typically include the time to prepare any ingredient. So, if it has chopped onions as an ingredient, they assume already chopped. (Now, if they just have onion and include chopping in directions, bets are off.)
  • yen223 6y ago
    Apologies for stating the obvious, but cutting and chopping are skills. Like any skills, you will suck at it at first, but time and practice will speed up your prep time. There's a huge difference between having to consciously cut vegetables, and being able to do it via muscle memory.
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  • blondin 6y ago
    "mise en place" or prep work (not the one you mention in your comment) is important. you'd be surprised how much time is wasted chopping onions, boiling veggies, marinating meat, etc. these should be done in advance if not the day before.
  • vmception 6y ago
    The same people that would be dismissive of your experience here are the same people that would be dismissive of the concept of getting specific groceries delivered while the world changes before their eyes. Basically everyone just stopped talking to them and chose the more convenient solution.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • bsder 6y ago
    This is not at all unusual in cooking articles. There was a nice article talking about how long it actually takes to caramelize onions. Everything says like 20 minutes when it actually takes almost an hour. Cookbooks and recipes with rigor are few and far between.
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    • SamBam 6y ago
      I always hate that frequent retort, though, because people are always saying "this recipe says caramelize the onion for 20 minutes, and that's impossible, this recipe will take an hour!" but they're attacking the wrong thing: cook the onions for 20 minutes, then quibble about whether "caramelizing" is the scientifically-correct word. The intent of the recipe is almost always to cook the onions for the time stated. Chefs were referring to softened, browned onions as "caramelized" for decades before the chemists started coming in and saying "well, actually that isn't technically caramelized..."
      • astura 6y ago
        I've noticed in my part of America when people say "caramelized onions" they don't mean dark brown fully caramelized onions. They usually just mean cooked onions. I expect when I order a dish that advertises "caramelized onions" I'll get cooked onions 99 times out of 100. I was well into my 20s before I ever even had fully caramelized onions. (and I really wasn't impressed if I'm being honest) However, I also noticed in Montreal "caramelized onions" actually always meant caramelized onions. So it's just really just poor terminology rather than a ploy to fool you.
        • bsder 6y ago
          I would argue its more a function of "time". Nobody in America is going to wait an hour for food outside of the high-end restaurants. So, anything with "caramelized onions" would need to prep and store that step with the associated degradation. The exception was my favorite cheesesteak place (sadly now gone--the owners got old and retired). The owner literally had a row of chopped onions that stretched the length of the grill. As he cooked he would keep adding onions on the far right while moving the entire line of onions leftward--so the onions that got used actually had enough time to truly caramelize. Similarly for the steak, just much faster. When everything got to the far left (steak with cheese (people who want CheeseWhiz could go somewhere else thanks), onions, bun) his wife would assemble the full thing. It was a thing of beauty to watch them work. And the cheesesteak was glorious. And now I'm hungry and craving a cheesesteak that doesn't exist anymore. :(
  • SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
    Prep time only includes preparation steps listed in the recipe, never time to prepare or measure the ingredients. So a recipe that calls for "5 onions, finely chopped" won't count the peeling & chopping time. But when it says "sautee onions for 5 minutes" that's where the "5 minutes of prep" comes from. "Cooking time" is usually the unattended cooking time, where something is just boiling in a pot or baking in an oven.
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  • dheera 6y ago
    I find a big part of the problem is most kitchens are designed poorly without any attention to workflows. For example pot->sink->stove or dining table->sink->drying rack or vegetables from fridge->sink->cutting board->pot and often require back-and-forth motion to accomplish these things. No attention to where the user would place a trash can AND recycling can AND compost can. No attention to where the user would place a knife block that is right in front of a suitable space for cutting, with enough space for cutting. Sinks or fridges placed next to stoves with no attention to where one would store oil, vinegar, other cooking condiments, spatulas, and things. Sinks designed without space for a drying rack nearby. Sinks and faucets that are too shallow that you can't wash a pot. Faucets that are always either too hot or too cold. Sharp-cornered hippie sinks that are hard to scrub down the corner. Counters designed so small and completely oblivious to the fact that everyone has at least a microwave and 3 other appliances and still need space to chop and work flour without making a mess. If the space is designed well with close attention to workflows and storage and even a gram of attention paid to the UI/UX of the kitchen, work would a LOT faster.
  • com2kid 6y ago
    First year I started cooking, dishes with sliced potatoes took over an hour to prep. Now, eh, no problem. Go watch some online videos about knife skills. Just knowing how to properly hold a knife çan cut prep time down.
  • repiret 6y ago
    There are three tricks to chopping an onion quickly: 1. A sharp knife. This is a must for just about anything in the kitchen. While the price tag of a name brand German or Japanese knife might scare you off, a $5 Kiwi #171 knife from Amazon or eBay can serve you well, and will kick the pants of the knives found in a lot of home kitchens. 2. Don't cut the root off until the very end. If this were a decade ago, I'd write more about technique, but the reality is you're better served by watching a few someones do it on youtube than reading what I type. 3. Practice.
    • Merman_Mike 6y ago
      And #3 is about 95% of it, like most of cooking.
      • taurath 6y ago
        Best practice - get a bag and make French onion soup. By the 4th onion with a YouTube video with proper technique you will be screaming fast comparatively. And French onion soup is delicious
      • repiret 6y ago
        No amount of practice will make you proficient with a dull knife.
    • johnisgood 6y ago
      It is a good thing to have a sharp knife if you are into making food from scratch, because if you are, you will be using the knife a lot.
      • dragontamer 6y ago
        Also, know the difference between honing and sharpening. The edge of a knife is very fragile, because it is very very thin. As such, when you use the knife's edge, it will eventually "bend over". A honing edge straightens the edge again. That's not "sharpening", its just pushing a stick against the knife edge to realign everything. It will cut better once you hone it. https://www.globeequipment.com/learning-center/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Victorinox_Honing-Graphic-1.jpg https://www.globeequipment.com/learning-center/wp-content/up... ----------- "Sharpening" is when you remove metal from the edge of the knife. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0001/8425/4516/files/messen_slijpen_EN_710x710.png https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0001/8425/4516/files/messe... Honing should be done every time you use the knife. Sharpening should only be done every month (if you use the knife a lot) or once every year (if its a rarely used knife)
  • tayo42 6y ago
    The other commenter kind of hinted at it, but there's tricks to cutting every vegetable efficiently. Humans have been cooking forever and have gotten good at it.
  • andreareina 6y ago
    Fortunately there's evidence that cooking is easier to learn than writing software :) Mise en place[1] is implicit in recipes, but as you say it does make the listed timings misleading. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place
  • apsurd 6y ago
    The book SALT FAT ACID HEAT changed my life. I’ve gifted that book to 3 people in my life so far Actually, you can be four! Send me your address and i’ll send it to you, email the gmail domain with the handle plusjade it’s really that good ^_^
    • pindab0ter 6y ago
      What makes the book so good? Why do you recommend it?
    • tommica 6y ago
      What makes it so good? I want to learn to cook, and your enthuasism is quite inspiring
      • Hasu 6y ago
        I've read part of it, and really enjoyed it, and I would say: It breaks cooking down into four simple, basic principles (the salt, acid, fat, and heat of the title), then deep dives into each one and explains exactly how those things contribute to the taste of different dishes. This allows you to learn to cook without just following a recipe and knowing that if you apply those principles correctly to whatever food you have in your kitchen, you can make something reasonably tasty. Of course, learning to cook also involves many other techniques and combining flavors in more complex ways, but if you're starting out and can't boil an egg, it's a great introduction to the basics of what makes food taste good.
        • taurath 6y ago
          It’s a pretty deep read I’d say. It’s improved a lot of my instincts in the kitchen (what’s a dish or pot missing) . Recipes are also nice but can be a cost trap until you generate a sense of what sorts of things you want to have stocked. For that I’d say stick to one grouping of recipes (like say, Italian) to get a basic idea of what “most” recipes use in that grouping. That will save you money as you won’t have to be going out for different new spices, canned goods and oils every time you cook.
        • 6y ago
  • wrsh07 6y ago
    I would definitely recommend watching a few videos. 1) knife basics & skills. Not to nerd out too much here, but a good chefs knife is such an important tool (reply if you want any specific tips or have questions) 2) learn how to cut or prep the thing you are going to do on YouTube. Watch a couple of videos. Blue apron has good ones, but YouTube will also often jump to the good stuff if you are willing to use Google's search. Most useful: basic knife skills should help you cut cucumbers and zucchini better. After that, broccoli can be really efficiently removed from the stem. Lemons can be fairly easily quartered and de seeded if quartered vertically. Literally anything else and whatever cut, just watch some videos. Onions - there are nice ways to dice them. Etc etc 3) be kind to yourself; prep the kitchen a bit ahead of time. Clean surfaces. Pre measure ingredients into bowls. Keep a trash bowl near your cutting board so you don't have to walk to the garbage bin. Start the timer after you've done a little work to get things ready, but before you've turned on any heat or sliced any vegetables (eventually, the prep step will be super fast or you can optimize your kitchen for your flows)
    • scaryclam 6y ago
      A trash bowl is a really under-recommended thing to have where you're working. A tidy space is much easier to work in, so having somewhere to quickly put the offcuts and mess is a really simple thing, but makes for a way better cooking space. AND you can move it with you/put it out of the way when it's not needed.
  • dragontamer 6y ago
    There's a concept called "Mise en place", which basically is some french phrase which means "Prepare your stuff". Do all your measuring of ingredients at once. Once all of the ingredients are measured, then combining them when needed becomes far more efficient, instead of context-switching. Alternatively, use a scale. Keep your dish you're baking on the scale, and just keep adding stuff until the right amount of weight is added. IMO, the scale methodology is far easier. ---- As far as "chopping an onion", there's a safe way to slice food. You want the knife to be very sharp, then when you do a slight "slicing" motion, you can feel the bite. When you feel the bite, that's when you can press down, knowing that the knife won't slip on the onion and slice off a chunk of your skin. If you push down before you feel the bite, you may have the top of the knife slide off the top off the onion and onto your fingers. With a dull knife, that's not a big deal (but a dull knife means you're not really going to be cutting very quickly...)
    • bobthepanda 6y ago
      There’s also something to be said about the proper knife motion. A knife is not a saw. One should try to cut down and forward, away from you. And you should slightly protrude your knuckles out so that your knife is away from your fingers as it is against your knuckles.
      • KineticLensman 6y ago
        It also helps if you use a large knife with a curved blade, so that you can rock it along its length. This is great for quickly dicing veg into really tiny pieces (grain of rice size).
        • klodolph 6y ago
          Knives with straight edges work well too, it’s just that the techniques are completely different. If you are used to using a curved knife, the straight knife will seem clumsy and slow, but it’s not. I would recommend a (curved) chef's knife for most people, though.
        • dragontamer 6y ago
  • stickfigure 6y ago
    Remember the initial feeling of navigation by HJKL? And how hindbrain those keystrokes are now? It gets that way with onion-chopping (and everything else in the kitchen). Take mise en place seriously. If the recipe calls for chopped onions, chop them before you turn on the burner. Later you can work on parallelizing the process (eg, chopping the onions while the bacon is rendering) but to start with, just work on getting all the pieces on the table before you start the chess clock. Delegate to sous-spouses or sous-children. Rarely do you need to be a perfectionist. If you are sautéing or stewing or braising or souping, the onions cook down. Ceviche is a different matter. Baking may be more specific, but that kind of witchcraft is forbidden around here.
    • KineticLensman 6y ago
      I can cook reasonably well (I like food and have ~40 years of practice). > If the recipe calls for chopped onions, chop them before you turn on the burner. Later you can work on parallelizing the process For most meals I start the slowing-cooking item first and then start on the others once it is in the over / pot or similar. E.g. a roast joint. I'll get it in the oven and then prep the roasting veggies (e.g. potatoes and parsnips), get them in the oven and then start peeling the green veg (which only need cooking for a few minutes). Over the years I've learned how long things need and how long I take to prep them, so my timings usually work out. Chinese cooking (or at least my take on it) is my main exception: given the short cooking times of some things, and the large number of ingredients / dishes, I tend to prep everything first, and then start cooling simultaneously. The other obvious exception is using my smoker, where a meal might stay in it for more than 5 hours. I say 'meal' rather than 'meat' because I also use the smoker to cook chilli and tagine.
      • faeyanpiraat 6y ago
        I'm probably overcooking everything. Overcooking meats to be on the safe side, and overcooking the veggies, because they are in with the meat for the same amount of time, but they should be in for less, etc.. I guess I'm missing out on taste and nutrients aswell due to this?
  • oivey 6y ago
    This used to be very discouraging for me, but I recently learned that usually the time given for recipes doesn’t include chopping, measuring, etc. Because how much time that takes people is so variable, recipe authors leave it out. If it included, there is intense pressure to keep it under 30 minutes because people will avoid recipes with longer times (also, unfortunately, SEO does, too). You’re probably not as slow as you think.
    • Godel_unicode 6y ago
      Fwiw, this is totally untrue. Most people are simply not very efficient, even people who are "good at cooking". Knowing how to cook and then watching someone who is self-taught (or worse, YouTube influencer taught) is pretty eye-opening. Don't feel bad, most people are not actually good at cooking. But if you care, being good is pretty simple. It just takes actual training, which most people are surprisingly resistant to.
    • samdjstephens 6y ago
      Agree 100%. There's a race to the bottom when it comes to preparation times. One recipe says it takes 20 mins vs one that says 45 mins - which recipe are you going to choose?
    • klodolph 6y ago
      I am going to disagree here. I think prep times are generally accurate for people with decent skills who are motivated to move quickly (rather than hang out in the kitchen and chat, which is totally fine it just affects your schedule). How long does it take you to chop an onion? Well, let me put it this way—an instructional video of someone demonstrating how to chop an onion, moving slowly and pausing to explain the technique, will run about 90 seconds, possibly less. If it takes you more than about a minute to cut an onion, you are slow. Most people have dull knives, hold the knife incorrectly so it is unstable, make the wrong cuts in the onion so it falls apart, hold the onion incorrectly and move slowly because they are worried about cutting their fingers. If you sharpen your knife, hold it correctly, make the correct cuts, and hold the onion correctly, you’ll find that it’s very fast to cut an onion. Fact is—the difference between someone who is skilled and someone who is unskilled is big enough that they teach entire classes on knife technique. This is not about some esoteric subject like teaching you how to butcher small game in your kitchen—in a knife skills class, they’ll teach you basic stuff like how to cut onions. And I’ll say that being good at cutting onions does require a decent amount of skill—onions are round and slippery, after all.
  • jusssi 6y ago
    My process for onions: * Cut both of the heads off. * Peeling. I don't try to remove the dry peel, instead I just remove the whole outmost layer, comes off with a shallow cut then removing it. Yeah it's a bit of a waste, but often that first layer isn't in a great shape and you'd toss it anyway. * Cut in half, place the halfs flat side down. Much easier to do the rest when it doesn't try to roll away from under you. * Cut to slices without breaking the pack (i.e. keep it half-onion shaped). This is probably easier to do with a small knife than a large one. * Cut the sliced packs orthogonally to previous cuts. Done, except if you want a tiny mush (in that case, use a bigger rounded edge knife, cut with a rolling movement so that the tip end of the blade keeps in contact with the board; same technique also works great for garlic). As others have pointed out, you'll want a sharp knife (a knife sharpener is a good investment). Cut with sideways motion with a hint of downward pressure, instead of just trying to press down through the onion. Edit: Forgot the first step.
    • aden1ne 6y ago
      Additionally, a lot of people use a knife that is considerably too small for the task. I used to be one of them. It may look intimidating at first, but a bigger knife chops so much better!
      • Xylakant 6y ago
        you really want to use a proper chefs knife for all these tasks. The primary reason is that the knifes size and shape allow you to anchor it on the cutting board while making the cut. Having an anchor point allows you to make fast, precise and safe cuts. Another important point: Use a sharp knife. Dull knifes require much more force and are much more likely to slip - the injury risk is significantly increased.
  • staz 6y ago
    Sorry to add to the pile of comments, but I really recommend you watch a couple of video on cutting technique (like five minutes longs video, no need to nerd the whole thing out). Not only having all your fingers is good, but knowing you are safe will empower you to progressively raise the speed of your movements. It's a skill, you get better with time and practice.
  • dagw 6y ago
    Recipes that claim “5 minutes of prep” are more like 20 minutes for me Treat recipe prep times the same way you'd treat a managers estimate how long it should take you fix a bug. Truth is most recipe book writers haven't actually done the prep work from zero from their recipes and are basically just guessing. It's the same with the these TV shows where they cook a meal in 20 minutes. If you walk into a kitchen where an assistant has line up all the ingredients pre measured and prepped in separate bowels, pre-heated two ovens and all the pans they know you'll need, and made sure there are two large pots of boiling water already on the stoves then prehaps you can make the meal in 20 minutes on your 3rd or 4th try. Otherwise there is no chance.
    • gifnamething 6y ago
      >here are two large pots of boiling water already on the stoves Tangent: In the UK, I boil any water I need in a 240 V kettle. It dramatically reduces the waiting time.
      • wpearse 6y ago
        My mate just moved from NZ (230 volts) to Canada (110 volts) and he reckons the electric kettle over there is basically impotent due to having less than half as much potential kicking about in the wires. Maybe that explains why the Americans are so attached to their boiling pots?
        • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
          Its also why in tv shows made in the USA/Canada they always show stove top kettles with the whistle one. Always make me think of my Grans council house in Birmingham (UK) and her kettle.
        • colonwqbang 6y ago
          There's no reason why a 110 V kettle couldn't be as powerful as a 230 V one, if it was designed for that voltage. Just like light bulbs in the US are not generally less bright than those in France. If you take a 230 V kettle and connect it to 110 V, then yes it will be less powerful. Perhaps about 1/4 of the power.
  • neor 6y ago
    Chopping and cutting is a skill you need to get the hang of. I'm nowhere near a pro level of doing this, but I've become quite fast at it. It sounds a bit dorky, but it really helps to look up on YouTube how a pro cuts an onion for example. You'll realise that most people are cutting them wrong, and that the "correct" way speeds up the cutting process massively.
    • rytis 6y ago
      Many times this! I don't care about speed that much, but proper technique makes cutting a lot safer activity.
  • croon 6y ago
    > Recipes that claim “5 minutes of prep” are more like 20 minutes for me. It can be very discouraging. Always when discussing recipes with friends (I realize now how curiously frequent that is) the stated time is almost always too low for most people. So you're far from alone there, even among people who "can cook". I consider myself and my wife equals in cooking, but she is definitely much faster than me, and is of the rare kind who can complete most (new) recipes within the specified time, while I prepare slower and always go back many times to double check things. But she's the outlier, not me, at least from my anecdotes. I could probably work on chopping faster and less "perfectionistic", but the recipe part after getting used to dishes is where I make up most time after a few times. Once you get a hang of a region's cuisine, you get a feel for how measurements fit and what seasoning works, and that's how I like to cook. Which is also why I don't like baking, since there's a lot less wiggle room for improv.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    > Chopping an onion takes what feels like an eternity. It's definitely partly practice, but make sure you have a decently sharp knife (you don't need to get anything ridiculously expensive but you should be paying ~£20 for one knife). The cheap "sharp knives" you get for £20-30 for a whole set tend to not actually be that sharp and make it really difficult to cut through things like onions because they slip all over the place.
    • stevesimmons 6y ago
      Sharp knives are a must! I got my high quality but very old knives professionally sharpened a few months ago. It made a world of difference and cost something like £25 for 5 chef's knives, scissors and a serrated bread knife. The guys I went to (in south London [1]) do most of their business renting knife sets to restaurants: each chef has two sets of knives; every few weeks they come by to drop of the newly sharpened set and take the other set away to sharpen back at their workshop. Their tip is rather than paying full retail price for quality knives, buy knives through them. They'll recommend what's best for your needs and budget. You can save even more by buying from their restaurant rental stock, freshly resharpened, for something like 1/8th of what you'd pay new in a store. [1] http://www.collini.co.uk/ http://www.collini.co.uk/ in Balham (55 Fontenoy Road, SW12 9LX). If you take your knives to them for sharpening, you can watch them do it, on large, 1950s era motorised grindstones. Absolutely fascinating.
  • secondcoming 6y ago
    Get yourself a Slow Cooker. You just chuck a load of ingredients into it and turn it on for a few hours. Minimal prep (you may need to peel a carrot) and no need to schedule tasks.
    • account42 6y ago
      Unless you are just slow cooking all the time, getting a multicooker is probably a better investment. Those can usually slow cook just fine, but also cook rice or pressure cook if you need something faster.
  • kozhevnikov 6y ago
    Checkout J. Kenji López-Alt on YouTube. He's is food writer (Serious Eats/Food Lab) and a chef and during lockdown he started making POV videos of him cooking for his family. You can see it in near-real time and pick up on techniques and shortcuts not normally emphasised.
    • mprovost 6y ago
      I can also really recommend Adam Ragusea. All of his recipes are optimised for the home kitchen and he shows all of the steps including preparation (although sometimes sped up). He also has a lot of tips about not using so many pans etc.
  • egwor 6y ago
    It is all to do with practice and techniques. Get yourself a copy of Leith's How to Cook. Link I just googled: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leiths-Cook-School-Food-Wine/dp/1849493197 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leiths-Cook-School-Food-Wine/dp/184... A few things: * It will show you how to cut and the correct techniques to use. Have a look at the Amazon 'look inside' to see how to cut onions, carrots and asparagus * When cutting things like carrots, are you cutting one carrot or multiple? (the next point is important for this) * Are your knives sharp? There should be almost no effort cutting through a carrot, for example. Background to Leiths: * They're a real cooking school that teaches professional chefs assuming very little knowledge * It was set up by Prue Leith and Caroline Waldegrave. Prue Leith is one of the judges on the Great British Bakeoff. * Leiths is well known in London for both their professional courses and for amateur ones too (e.g. a day to de-bone a chicken)
  • tomjen3 6y ago
    I highly recommend looking up basic cooking skills on youtube - just search for that phrase - there are basic knife skills that can help you chop an onion in under a minute. For some reason those skills are not listed most cook books and I certainly didn't learn them in school.
  • nicbou 6y ago
    I have more experience in the kitchen, and those estimates are still way off. I don't even pay attention to them. Cooking is a nice break from screen-based activities. I put a podcast or some music on, and cook myself something nice. Since it's a hobby, I don't worry too much about efficiency. That being said, after making a recipe once or twice, I always transcribe them, along with minor optimisations. Unlike some recipe creators, I don't have a dish washer, so these little optimisations matter.
  • alan_n 6y ago
    Apart from the other tips given, in particular proper technique: Try doing a few meals in a row with similar ingredients and chop once for like the next 2-3 days (depending on what's being chopped). Also you can try timing yourself. See how long it takes to chop an onion, record it. Now you know the REAL prep time for a recipe based on it's ingredients. What really saves time is having an idea what order you're going to do things and how to parallelize tasks, but for that you need to have some intuition about time so you don't accidently burn something. There's a recipe I make that takes twice as long if strictly prepped first then cooked. Also, just going to state the obvious, but if you're cooking for more than two people, it's just always much harder.
• andreareina 6y ago
  Agreed. You're also not carrying nearly so much context in your head, and a lot require none, so you don't need to clobber your stack.
• jclulow 6y ago
  The mental cost of getting over the hump of procrastination is also not uniform. If I clean dishes in chunks at least somewhat as I go, then the kitchen is less of a catastrophe when I'm finished. I'm more likely to put off the subsequent washing and cleaning after eating if the kitchen is a ruinous crater.
• macjohnmcc 6y ago
  It's quite different to switch between tasks when one task doesn't need your attention for a moment but quite another to switch in the middle of the tasks.
  • taeric 6y ago
    In both, though, take care on what you switch to. The toast example is good. If, while waiting on that you decide to clean the front yard, don't expect good toast.
• OnACoffeeBreak 6y ago
  I absolutely agree with cleaning while cooking. Sauce has sputtered on the rage top, go ahead and wipe it off while it's still liquid. If I'm done cutting on the cutting board, rinse the board and kind off while things are cooking. That said, I suspect that ability to clean and cook at the same time comes with experience and comfort with the cooking task. If imagine the same goes for socializing while cooking. Some meals I can do on autopilot and have the connotative capacity for other tasks, while others I ask the family to give give me some room to focus.
• Swizec 6y ago
  My mom always taught me that a cook leaves the kitchen cleaner than they found it. But I burnt many things before I got the timing down. You can do half the dishwasher while eggs are frying and no more.
  • aaronblohowiak 6y ago
    The way I like eggs, I wouldn’t have time to turn around let alone do the dishwasher... are you making a quiche?
    • Swizec 6y ago
      Very low heat, many duck eggs. Takes a while :) The goal is for max runny yolk with juuuuust solid whites and no crispy brown on bottom.
      • aaronblohowiak 6y ago
        Sounds delicious!
• Waterluvian 6y ago
  Oh I agree. I have to cook out of necessity, but I don't enjoy the art at all. What makes it fun is that I make it a game of optimizing concurrency. I just love thinking ahead and planning what operations go in what order, how, when, how few trips to the same cupboards and drawers I can make, etc. I can make scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and some fruit or yogurt for a family of four in six minutes without leaving a mess. (The bacon used to double the time until I decided to use a second pan and pay the price of cleaning two)
  • ycombobreaker 6y ago
    My wife started cooking bacon in the oven or toaster oven. It increases latency from a cold start (preheating) but I find it takes less attention that a stovetop, and the result is still tasty. I am curious if you have experimented with that, specifically because as you state you enjoy the scheduling most.
    • Waterluvian 6y ago
      Yes! I found that oven bacon is pretty great and low effort. But slow. Air fryer bacon is amazing though and fast. But still I find pan bacon the most enjoyable and then I can vary the qualities so the kids get crunchy and I get soft.
• Ericson2314 6y ago
  Precessional kitchens needing enough throughout (e.g. Inn and Out) often have an assembly line because switching is still inefficient.
  • Uberphallus 6y ago
    If you think about it, it won't leave your brain: McDonalds restaurants are basically CPUs, especially now with the pandemic. Instruction fetch: ordering on the touchscreen. Instruction decoding: each component of the order gets routed to the functional unit that can handle it. Separate functional units: fries, burger flipping, burger assembly, fridge, etc. Superscalar: multiple functional units to do the same operation (flipping, assembly) Pipelines: different phases (fetch/decoding/execution/store in register) happen in parallel for different instructions. Speculative execution: the most common sub-orders (e.g. Big Mac, basic cheeseburgers) are executed before they are ordered and wait in the sub-pipeline (rack slide) until completion. Write to register: take the results from the different funcitonal units and putting them in your bag.
    • Thev00d00 6y ago
      I wish you could favourite comments on HN, this is great. Edit: TIL You can! Click its timestamp, then favourite at the top.
• rorykoehler 6y ago
  Even in a pro kitchen they are usually cooking and prepping multiple dishes for multiple orders at once. A friend of mine is a Michelin starred chef and they have a chefs table in the restaurant where you can watch the kitchen. The thing that struck me most while watching them work is how many things each individual chef is juggling at once. It's an art form to cook so many dishes to perfection at the same time.
• salty_biscuits 6y ago
  This is really an experience thing. You are experienced enough to chunk bits of the work together so that there is no context switch. Beginners can't do this, that's why experienced cooks are so much faster. They intuitively know what will "fit" together in time. This generalises to other tasks...
• johnisgood 6y ago
  I disagree, too, because while you are cooking, there are a lot of other things to do in the kitchen. There are times when you are just waiting 2-3 hours. If you have unwashed dishes, that is a good time to clean it all up. Once you are done with the kitchen, feel free to do anything else until, say, the lentils are done.
• rndgermandude 6y ago
  The context switch cost is still reasonably high. However, since you're in "idle/wait" status, you can as well use that to perform such a costly context switch and cleanup some. If you however e.g. had to stir something every minute or more, then the context switch would be too expensive, even tho you're still "idle/wait" most of the time. I start cleaning/tidying up myself when cooking, but only "easy to clean" stuff, because more than once I have been burned by focusing too long on cleaning something more difficult to clean (or rather my food was burned a little).
• mikeymz 6y ago
  Absolutely! Snatching those gaps for clean up means you are not faced with total carnage once the meal is finished. It is clearly more efficient
• ryndbfsrw 6y ago
  Based on this reply I assumed the topic was all about context-switching in a kitchen-environment. What a weird way to strawman
• vector_spaces 6y ago
  Even in a kitchen, you clean as you work. If all you do is cook, your work station is going to end up a mess, your mise en place will almost certainly go out the window, and you'll soon end up in the weeds. (source: I'm a former pastry chef)
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  I believe their analogy is indeed predicated on having little to no downtime available. Think eggs Benedict for four in 15 minutes rather than a five hour brisket braise. If you batch together cooking as well as cleaning tasks just because they both happen to be in the kitchen one ends up getting overwhelmed by both context switching as well as motivation.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  The reason that recipes list ingredients at the beginning and not interspersed throughout the instructions is because you can almost always measure, chop, and organize your ingredients ahead of time. Cooking is a lot less of a hassle and challenge when, as long as the heat is on, you're simply adding ingredients to a pot or pan and stirring or flipping occasionally. While what you're doing is perfectly reasonable, context switching still takes on mental effort, and chopping ingredients while things are cooking adds undue stress to the process.
• caniscrator 6y ago
  I think it's dependent upon the end goal that one intends to achieve and ones interest in given set of task. If the end goal against different set of task is different, context switching would be hard. People working in startups do context switching seamlessly comprising of different apparently unrelated task i.e. Development, Growth Hacking, QA, Marketing etc. The point is to find a higher purpose that engages one holistically. Procrastination won't happen then.
• wombatmobile 6y ago
  What do you cook? 1. Familiar recipes? 2. New recipes? 3. New categories of cuisine? Are you able to integrate dishwashing activities with similar aplomb and efficiency in each of these categories?
• Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  Many dishes simply require such switching because they require two pans to finish around the same time and then combine. What is the extreme end of this, anyway? Is the auctor asserting that we hold our lives for the week it takes for various form of dough to ferment till readiness? simply staring at the fridge that houses it? This is also the problem with this philosophy: the vague definition of when a task be “done” or “still ongoing”.
• calaphos 6y ago
  A better analogy for context switching would be stowing everything away you used for making cookies before starting the next task. What you are describing would work as an analogy for hyperthreading / smt though. Not all ressources are used because one needs to wait for things to be ready. So you do something else to keep busy in the same space as the rest of your kitchen.
• globular-toast 6y ago
  Yeah. The author isn't a competent cook so it's an unfortunate analogy. For a good cook, cleaning dishes isn't a context switch, it's part of the same process. It's a shame that the top comment is calling out the analogy and completely missing the point of the article, though.
• aqme28 6y ago
  I think it's different with creative or intellectually challenging tasks that need a certain amount of concentration. I also clean while I cook, but have a lot of trouble context-switching while coding.