5 ms·

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

by 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.
    - agurk 6y ago
      If volts were there only limitation on the design that would be correct, however amps are also important in this case. A 240V UK wall socket can be up to 13 amps whilst a US 110V line is 12 amps. With power (watts) being volts * amps that gives the power of 3120 Vs 1320 watts for UK Vs USA respectively. This means a UK kettle can dump heat into the water up to 2.4 times faster so should boil in less than half the time. Kettles are at the high end of power consumption as generally people want a fast boil. Lights are towards the low end as its rare for someone to want even 1000 watts of incandescent brightness.
    - wongarsu 6y ago
      In Europe kettles typically use around 2300W, since homes are typically wired with 16A breakers (and you don't want the kettle to pop the breaker as soon as you add another device). But US homes are wired similarly, typically with 15A breakers. So you get kettles that typically use 1500W, much less than the European equivalent. Sure, you could use powerful kettles in the US on a 20W outlet, or on a 230V circuit, but nobody is going to do that. A typical kettle that you can just buy and plug in wherever is less powerful in the US just because you use halve the voltage but don't wire for double the current.
      - colonwqbang 6y ago
        Ok, that makes sense! I guess I just assumed that US wiring would typically be rated for higher currents to compensate for the less efficient transmission. It didn't occur to me that Americans would settle for having less power than the rest of the world, it seems uncharacteristic somehow :)
        bregma 6y ago
        I'm sure 1% of Americans have 30 amp circuits in their kitchen and the help can boil water at twice the rate. Most Americans support this because they consider themselves just temporarily embarrassed by low-powered kettles.
        marcosdumay 6y ago
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Same here (in Poland). Besides being faster, this is likely more energy-efficient, as the kettle isn't bleeding heat as much as a pot on the stove. Speaking of which, I don't understand why we've settled on a gas stove design that's so terribly inefficient, with most[0] of the heat leaking around the pan. Why no design with a combustion chamber of some sorts? -- [0] - Well, at least a lot. I didn't do the math here yet, but it's hard to imagine otherwise with unrestricted airflow around the pan.
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    > this is likely more energy-efficient Be that as it may, it's most likely more expensive. This is purely my personal guesstimate, but gas tends to be much cheaper in Poland than electricity. More efficient, maybe, but I'd be very surprised if it was cheaper given the prices.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Yes, I assume it's more expensive. Gas is cheaper than electricity in Poland, but then again, electricity also isn't that expensive for preboiling in a kettle to make a big difference. On a related note, I was surprised when I did calculations on how much it actually costs us to bake our own bread. We started doing that a lot during this pandemic. It turns out, the cost of ingredients + electricity adds to slightly less than what it would cost to buy the same products from a bakery. This doesn't price in time spent on preparing and baking, but it's not like we could actually use that time to make money, we're having fun, and going to a store also takes time (and/or fuel). Electricity is cheap.
  - corty 6y ago
    > Why no design with a combustion chamber of some sorts? Thermal capacity. Gas stoves are great because they have none, so any temperature changes are immediate. Anything between the pot and the flame will destroy that advantage. Also, the combustion chamber will have a vent for the exhaust. So I would suspect that it won't be any more efficient, except for very small pot sizes.
- leoedin 6y ago
  Or use an induction stove, which is even quicker than a kettle
  - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
    It's cheaper to buy a kettle, than a whole induction stove, and compatible pots.
    - leoedin 6y ago
      Certainly that's true (although when I got an induction stove i only had to replace one pan - they've been widespread for long enough now that all the cookware I bought in the last decade is compatible, as are all my ancient cast iron pans). It's worth understanding though - at least in the UK the received wisdom is that "kettle is fastest" - but that's not always true any more.
    - andrepd 6y ago
      Is it, in the long run? Induction is much more efficient than gas.
      - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
        I'm talking about an electric kettle, just like the parent comment.
klodolph 6y ago
All the recipe books I own have accurate prep + cook times for an “ideal chef in ideal circumstances.” I don’t know why they wouldn’t. For any decent recipe book the recipes are made and tested many times in different variations. If you know that you are slower then just pad it out a bit. It shouldn’t be discouraging that professional & motivated amateur chefs are faster than you—just like it should not be discouraging that professional basketball players can score more points than you. I can understand why cooking can be slow and painful for people new to the activity. However, if you want to get fast at cooking, it is not that hard to get fast. Knife skills, multitasking, and planning will make everything go much faster. If your knife skills are not great (say, takes you longer than about a minute to dice an onion) or you are tired from a long day of work and aren’t in the mood to move fast, prep will take a lot longer. Just observing people do prep I think it’s fairly plain to see that tons of people are just damn slow at it, either because they don’t enjoy going fast or because their skills aren’t up to par. And there are plenty of cooking shows where the contestants are under strict time limits but must still do all their prep within the time limit. Cutthroat Kitchen usually has a 30 minute limit, including prep, and including acts of sabotage that increase the difficulty.
- mbeex 6y ago
  > It shouldn’t be discouraging that professional & motivated amateur chefs are faster than you I don't see, why cooking should be a competition for speed in the first place.
  - jdbernard 6y ago
    I don't think it's a competition mentality as much as a need to be able to plan the time it takes to prep and cook so that the food is ready when the family is hungry. I like to cook, but I don't have tons of time to cook as a hobby. New recipes are worked into our regular meal times. If it takes me an hour longer than the estimated time to prep and cook, I've made everyone wait an extra hour, throwing off any other plans for the evening. That can be discouraging and lead to wondering "why did they say it only takes 20 minutes? Are they just guessing, or am I just a slow cook?" Hence this thread. :)
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Preparing the ingredients is good advice at home too. Otherwise you forget things or use the wrong amounts. Have everything in small bowls ready to go in, then start cooking proper. And yes an onion can be chopped in seconds. There are youtube videos on it. Worth learning.

by dagw 6y ago

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.
  - agurk 6y ago
    If volts were there only limitation on the design that would be correct, however amps are also important in this case. A 240V UK wall socket can be up to 13 amps whilst a US 110V line is 12 amps. With power (watts) being volts * amps that gives the power of 3120 Vs 1320 watts for UK Vs USA respectively. This means a UK kettle can dump heat into the water up to 2.4 times faster so should boil in less than half the time. Kettles are at the high end of power consumption as generally people want a fast boil. Lights are towards the low end as its rare for someone to want even 1000 watts of incandescent brightness.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    In Europe kettles typically use around 2300W, since homes are typically wired with 16A breakers (and you don't want the kettle to pop the breaker as soon as you add another device). But US homes are wired similarly, typically with 15A breakers. So you get kettles that typically use 1500W, much less than the European equivalent. Sure, you could use powerful kettles in the US on a 20W outlet, or on a 230V circuit, but nobody is going to do that. A typical kettle that you can just buy and plug in wherever is less powerful in the US just because you use halve the voltage but don't wire for double the current.
    - colonwqbang 6y ago
      Ok, that makes sense! I guess I just assumed that US wiring would typically be rated for higher currents to compensate for the less efficient transmission. It didn't occur to me that Americans would settle for having less power than the rest of the world, it seems uncharacteristic somehow :)
      - bregma 6y ago
        I'm sure 1% of Americans have 30 amp circuits in their kitchen and the help can boil water at twice the rate. Most Americans support this because they consider themselves just temporarily embarrassed by low-powered kettles.
      - marcosdumay 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Same here (in Poland). Besides being faster, this is likely more energy-efficient, as the kettle isn't bleeding heat as much as a pot on the stove. Speaking of which, I don't understand why we've settled on a gas stove design that's so terribly inefficient, with most[0] of the heat leaking around the pan. Why no design with a combustion chamber of some sorts? -- [0] - Well, at least a lot. I didn't do the math here yet, but it's hard to imagine otherwise with unrestricted airflow around the pan.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  > this is likely more energy-efficient Be that as it may, it's most likely more expensive. This is purely my personal guesstimate, but gas tends to be much cheaper in Poland than electricity. More efficient, maybe, but I'd be very surprised if it was cheaper given the prices.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Yes, I assume it's more expensive. Gas is cheaper than electricity in Poland, but then again, electricity also isn't that expensive for preboiling in a kettle to make a big difference. On a related note, I was surprised when I did calculations on how much it actually costs us to bake our own bread. We started doing that a lot during this pandemic. It turns out, the cost of ingredients + electricity adds to slightly less than what it would cost to buy the same products from a bakery. This doesn't price in time spent on preparing and baking, but it's not like we could actually use that time to make money, we're having fun, and going to a store also takes time (and/or fuel). Electricity is cheap.
- corty 6y ago
  > Why no design with a combustion chamber of some sorts? Thermal capacity. Gas stoves are great because they have none, so any temperature changes are immediate. Anything between the pot and the flame will destroy that advantage. Also, the combustion chamber will have a vent for the exhaust. So I would suspect that it won't be any more efficient, except for very small pot sizes.
leoedin 6y ago
Or use an induction stove, which is even quicker than a kettle
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  It's cheaper to buy a kettle, than a whole induction stove, and compatible pots.
  - leoedin 6y ago
    Certainly that's true (although when I got an induction stove i only had to replace one pan - they've been widespread for long enough now that all the cookware I bought in the last decade is compatible, as are all my ancient cast iron pans). It's worth understanding though - at least in the UK the received wisdom is that "kettle is fastest" - but that's not always true any more.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    Is it, in the long run? Induction is much more efficient than gas.
    - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
      I'm talking about an electric kettle, just like the parent comment.

klodolph 6y ago

All the recipe books I own have accurate prep + cook times for an “ideal chef in ideal circumstances.” I don’t know why they wouldn’t. For any decent recipe book the recipes are made and tested many times in different variations. If you know that you are slower then just pad it out a bit. It shouldn’t be discouraging that professional & motivated amateur chefs are faster than you—just like it should not be discouraging that professional basketball players can score more points than you. I can understand why cooking can be slow and painful for people new to the activity. However, if you want to get fast at cooking, it is not that hard to get fast. Knife skills, multitasking, and planning will make everything go much faster. If your knife skills are not great (say, takes you longer than about a minute to dice an onion) or you are tired from a long day of work and aren’t in the mood to move fast, prep will take a lot longer. Just observing people do prep I think it’s fairly plain to see that tons of people are just damn slow at it, either because they don’t enjoy going fast or because their skills aren’t up to par. And there are plenty of cooking shows where the contestants are under strict time limits but must still do all their prep within the time limit. Cutthroat Kitchen usually has a 30 minute limit, including prep, and including acts of sabotage that increase the difficulty.

mbeex 6y ago
> It shouldn’t be discouraging that professional & motivated amateur chefs are faster than you I don't see, why cooking should be a competition for speed in the first place.
- jdbernard 6y ago
  I don't think it's a competition mentality as much as a need to be able to plan the time it takes to prep and cook so that the food is ready when the family is hungry. I like to cook, but I don't have tons of time to cook as a hobby. New recipes are worked into our regular meal times. If it takes me an hour longer than the estimated time to prep and cook, I've made everyone wait an extra hour, throwing off any other plans for the evening. That can be discouraging and lead to wondering "why did they say it only takes 20 minutes? Are they just guessing, or am I just a slow cook?" Hence this thread. :)

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Preparing the ingredients is good advice at home too. Otherwise you forget things or use the wrong amounts. Have everything in small bowls ready to go in, then start cooking proper. And yes an onion can be chopped in seconds. There are youtube videos on it. Worth learning.