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Recipe writers are still lying about cooking time in 2023. I signed up for a Hello Fresh promo recently to get some new meal ideas, and it's making me feel lik

Recipe writers are still lying about cooking time in 2023. I signed up for a Hello Fresh promo recently to get some new meal ideas, and it's making me feel like the slowest cook on the planet. I reliably exceed their stated prep and cooking times by 100-200%. Tonight's "40 minute" recipe took about 70 minutes, and that was with a family member helping out with some of the prep and cooking. I wonder if they collect any data on how long it takes actual customers to cook them. I might be slower than many, but I'd be surprised if the median customer could complete the recipe in anywhere close to the listed time.

egman_ekki 3y ago
You should watch a couple of Iron Chef episodes if you want to feel extra slow :D
wjnc 3y ago
Do you prepare following the steps in the guide? I’ve found that it’s much quicker to prepare based on what hits the pan when. If you do that the first items hit the pan sooner and you are in a nice rush to keep up the cutting with the cooking. Massive efficiency gain. And do some YouTube based cutting training. But that was coming from total beginner level.
episteme 3y ago
I had the same problem with Hello Fresh. I dreaded doing all the prep. However, we tried one called Green Chef and found it much more realistic. The cost of any of these services is too high for me to stomach without some sort of discount but we actually enjoyed cooking the recipes with this one while it lasted.
brnt 3y ago
Absolutely! I think I am especially slow at cutting veg, which is a compromise between my motorically undeveloped and untrained self not cutting my fingers (happens every few weeks) and speed. Multiplying by 1.5 is a safe lower limit for me. I did learn a few things through it though (how to use vinager and not to be afraid of more than 5 ingredients), which is a great outcome. Apart from a bigger selection of recipes I know.
- iddan 3y ago
  I would highly recommend learning how to use a chef’s knife properly. There are techniques for cutting, cleaning etc that reduce the cooking time significantly. I had the luck to be taught how to use one in school and by my dad but I always notice most people don’t know how to use it and don’t take the time to learn it (which would save them a lot of time)
  - brnt 3y ago
    Tried, but I probably don't cut enough to get sufficient practice.
Aaargh20318 3y ago
I have the same experience with Marley Spoon. I always make sure I prepare everything in advance but the actual recipe wants you to do some of the cutting and dicing while stuff is already cooking and they often have impossible timing. For example, they will have you fry the meat for 2-3 minutes, clean and chop a boatload of vegetables and add them after those 2-3 minutes pass. Sometimes they even do this during a step that requires constant attention, like browning minced meat. I have no idea how they test these recipes. Maybe they are possible if you’re a professional chef in a fully equipped kitchen with plenty of space but they aren’t in my tiny kitchen where I have to spend half a minute digging the colander out from the back of the cupboard. They also assume I have an infinite amount of cutting boards and knifes. For example, in step 1 they expect me to cut a chicken breast into bite size pieces, and then in step 2 or 3 I have to cut veggies for a salad. I can’t re-use the cutting board and knife I used for raw chicken for salad without giving it a thorough washing. So I cut everything in advance and do the chicken last.
- sublinear 3y ago
  > They also assume I have an infinite amount of cutting boards and knifes A professional kitchen doesn't either. They wipe things down with sanitizer as they go. i.e. a damp rag from a bucket of water/steramine solution.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    A professional kitchen should, at an absolute minimum, have separate cutting boards for raw meat, cooked meat, vegetables, and fish.
- com2kid 3y ago
  Cutting board covers, a rubber mat that lays on top of your cutting board, cut all your meats first, toss it in the sink, swap knives, cut all your veggies. Saves 5 minutes or so of prep time, well worth it IMHO. Also you can just throw it in the dishwasher and not worry about scrubbing a wood cutting board and possibly damaging it with moisture.
  - 3y ago
debaserab2 3y ago
I have the exact same problem/frustration and yet my wife consistently cooks the entire meal near or at the estimated cook time. Clearly I'm not as efficient as I think I am!
- eloisant 3y ago
  The thing is Hello Fresh is for people who are not used to cooking. If you're used to cooking then you know enough recipes, you know what to buy and you don't need Hello Fresh. Having cooking time from actual customers instead of veteran cooks would be helpful.
- samstave 3y ago
  Yeah, but you have done a good job of delegating that responsibility!
Sander_Marechal 3y ago
My wife and I use the Sorted Sidekick app from the Sorted Food youtube channel. It's the only recipes I tried where the stated cooking time pretty much matches how long it really takes us.
santialbo 3y ago
Prepping everything can take a lot of time if you are not experienced. Time for things like chopping an onion can vary from 1 minute to 5 very easily.
- mindentropy 3y ago
  My experience is similar to yours. Prepping takes the longest time for me. I feel that cooking is all about prepping as the actual cooking on the stove takes a lot less time. Many recipes just mention the actual cooking time and some very vague prep time.
MrScruff 3y ago
I feel that the time quoted to cook the recipes is always based on an experienced chef, which is likely often not the case for things like Hello Fresh. An experienced chef will have be far more efficient at chopping/food preparation - I'm reasonable fast at chopping but still probably end up focusing over details an experienced chef would know aren't going to matter for the final recipe. Also they're probably better at managing the parallel threads of execution most recipes need, hence they always talk about boiling water for pasta far more early then I ever end up needing it.
- marak830 3y ago
  You are spot on. Ex chef here(quite experienced), and without notice (while watching a tv show), I'm at least twice as fast as my wife at prep. When I'm focused I'm even faster. Even then I'm probably on par if not only a touch faster than these recipes XD
  - ip26 3y ago
    How long did it take you to get that fast? Any training, or just on the job?
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      I'm not the person you asked but I also am a very fast home cook due to professional cooking background. The job is the training in that kind of work. No one comes out of culinary school particularly fast and even most serious cooks don't go anyway. Cooks change restaurant often and every restaurant is a completely different set of foods and techniques. Training may teach you how to do something but doing it for hours a day months straight is where you learn to do it fast. A skilled cook at the prep table is looking at it like an F1 pit crew basically. What physical motions am I about to perform, what can be set up in advance and where should it go to reduce extraneous movement, what are the intermediate steps that can be batched together etc. There's never enough time for all the work you need to get done in the kitchen, so every day is a challenge to optimize your efficiency more than the previous one. Basically you can teach someone the right way to dice an onion but they won't be truly fast at it until they've diced a few thousand onions. Apply that to every task in the kitchen over a decade and you're pretty quick by the end of it.
wonnage 3y ago
It's tough to parallelize a recipe the first time you're cooking it - unless you have a photographic memory you're gonna have to keep checking back between steps and it's easy to miss something. Ends in getting really stressed out when you have something on the stove and realize you need to chop veg in 30 seconds. It's better the 2nd or 3rd time but I think with these meal plan services you're cooking something different every day, so it's hard to develop that familiarity. Ideally you'd follow their steps and take as long as you need the first time, and then go out and buy groceries and do it again, but that probably defeats the purpose of using such a service anyway
- bruckie 3y ago
  That's exactly how I'm using the service: get ideas for new meals during the promo, then cancel and make the ones I liked myself with ingredients from the store. So I do have some hope that I'll get faster. :)
zamalek 3y ago
On the contrary, my wife grabs recipes from Instagram (usually the Whole 30 crowd, but not exclusively). We've found their 20 minute recipes incredibly successful and tasty, and rarely cook anything else. Off the top of my head, one we get a lot of our recipes from is "deliciously Ella." I think it helps that each post has a picture of the meal, which suggests that the author has actually made it themselves.
- carabiner 3y ago
  I tried a TikTok recipe, feta with tomatoes pasta, and it was delicious. Will try the salmon rice bowl at some point too.
  - samstave 3y ago
    If you like salmon, and have a costco membership, one of the best, easiest, fastest and affordable meals: Get the salmon with the (3) butter-herb balls on top of it. (They used to be ~$19 on avg but now they are closer to $29 due to inflation) Get a Ceasar Salad Kit from the walk-in fridge. ~$7.99 (these used to be $5.99) Cook the salmon in the oven at 425 for 27 minutes. Make the salad kit. Get a bowl and serve salad in an individual bowl and put a piece of the salmon on top. Serves 4. SUPER good. But the salad doesnt do well as left overs, so if you're not going to finish it that night - make the salad in individual portions to avoid a wilted mess the next day. Also, if you have wimpy-limpy veggies (such as celery) put into an ice bath in a bowl in the fridge for a while (an hour or two) and it will become crisp again.
gustavorg 3y ago
Well, we know this is not true. At least Armando Scannone had a team of 4 cooks to make and rehearse each and every one of the recipes in his famous cookbook [1]. Armando Scannone has a famous Venezuelan cookbook, it is the obligatory reference for those who want to make Venezuelan dishes. I have personally tried many of the dishes and the recipes are correct and the result is just as the book indicates. [1] https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Armando-Scannone/dp/B011YUALZS https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Armando-Scannone/dp/B011YUALZS
- fastball 3y ago
  Are you replying to the right comment? Armando Scannone's cookbook seems almost entirely unrelated to GC's point.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Four skilled cooks will be able to complete recipes much faster than even a good home cook. It's like watching an electrician wire a bathroom in two hours and assuming anyone can do it. They can; after years of experience and knowing what to do, what not to do, and what to avoid.
mberning 3y ago
I love the 5 minute prep ones. I always joke to my wife, 5 minutes of prep, for a michelin star. Call me chef Marco.
k8sToGo 3y ago
Hello Fresh is horrible. They keep spamming and calling after I cancelled my trial.
ridgered4 3y ago
I remember Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals usually featured her pulling some ingredients she'd already chopped up or soaked in something the night before out from the fridge. Apparently the time spend yesterday didn't count against the clock.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 3y ago
  There's something to be said for it, but you have to plan ahead; most people who are starting out trying to cook are very bad at planning ahead. A cookbook that focused on "here's stuff you can pre-prep that can be used in multiple meals" would be nice.
tester89 3y ago
IME Hello Fresh and Gousto were always double their quoted time. 40 minutes was almost always 80 minutes. There is just one exception, namely that Gousto's 10 minute recipes are actually 30 minutes, but that's explained if you notice that they're often 15 minute recipes and they're lying and claiming they're 10 minutes (they have 5 minute, 10 minute and then 20 minute recipes, but no 15 minute recipes, which suggests that they round down for 15).
conductr 3y ago
Mirrors my experience. Prep work is the most underestimated part. I think they start with everything out on the counter and unpackaged and with necessary tooling lined up and ready. But those things take time. For me, something like mincing garlic cloves takes a solid 5-10 minutes alone and is one of the things that consistently stands out as they must have started with minced garlic to get to this time estimate.
- _fat_santa 3y ago
  I found that it really just comes down to how much experience you have. I started cooking a lot this year, mostly because it beats taking my girlfriend out to dinner every week. When I started I was very slow and dinners would take me in excess of an hour, mostly because I was just very unskilled in the basics of cooking. As time has gone on I found that making dinners took me less and less time, part of it is knowing the right techniques for preparing certain foods, others are little ergonomic things like getting a knife magnet and ensuring all the tools you need are at your fingertips. It's also knowing how long food cooks for, what you have to keep an eye on and what you can just let cook. The first time I made smash burgers at home it took me in excess of an hour to prep and cook everything and yesterday I was able to do the same in about 20 minutes.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Nah that's a perfect example of how experience & technique can speed things up dramatically. Here watch ole JP do it in about 90 seconds even while slowing down to explain it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5h1pDHhzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5h1pDHhzs
  - conductr 3y ago
    That’s not what an average home cook can do regarding knife skills. These services and recipes should be written for their audiences which are likely typical home chefs that don’t handle knifes that well. I’ve been cooking 40 years and have certainly tried to use a knife that way and it always feels unsafe to me. Also, typically requires a very sharp set of knifes which I do keep but I don’t think the average house does.
balderdash 3y ago
Don’t disagree that some of the recipe times are very optimistic, but watching friends cook gives me hives at how inefficient they are, handful of things to think about about that will massively speed up your cooking time: 1)read the recipe and spend a couple of min visualizing the steps, what you’ll need and writing out the timing and grouping chores. 2) do some mise en place[a] (buy $50 of small duralex glass bowls for this, they’re great). E.g. do all your dry good measuring, then wet measuring, vegetable chopping in groups. 3. Set up efficiently (mise en place above), watching someone go to the cupboard 15 times and then the fridge 8 times for things in their recipe is a huge waste. Use a trash bowl so you’re not running to the sink or garbage all the time. 4. Learn knife skills (a lot of cooking schools offer a stand alone class). The right way and the wrong way to dice an onion or Julianne a pepper are like 80%+ reductions in time spent on a task… 5. Clean while you cook. You’ll be shocked at the time savings if you combine these elements. A. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place
- savanaly 3y ago
  Biggest thing for me is your #5. When I watch others cook I see a lot of downtime. 30 seconds here waiting for oil in pan to get hot, 30 seconds there chatting with me while their water boils, it adds up to minutes and minutes that could have been spent washing dishes and cleaning surfaces. For me the perfect cook is when the last thing comes off the heat it's the only dirty dish, I can plate it, wash the dish in the sink, then leave the kitchen with the food and the kitchen cleaner than when I went in.
  - fooblaster 3y ago
    1. There is no "mis" for hello fresh recipes, literally everything is presented in a bag to you. There's often no measuring or any dependencies other than oil, salt, and pepper. 2. cleaning while you cook is not a time saver for producing the food, only a time saver when considering overall time in the kitchen. In my experience with meal kits over the last two years, the biggest time savers are nothing like what you said. 1. Meal kits try hard to not use multiple pans, as not all kitchens have that. Parallelize cooking where possible. 2. Parallelize chopping with cooking by getting some help. 3. Pre heat your oven before actively starting cooking in the kitchen, ie don't stand idle. Even still the recipe times are incredibly optimistic.
grvdrm 3y ago
I almost never look at recipe timing, but anecdotally, I know I'm slower. That said, I spent time as a line chef in a kitchen, and it gave me some useful skills in kitchen: cooking lots of things at the same time. These days, I'll fire up my grill, have something on the, and maybe something in the oven, and have done it enough times to know when to start/stir/turn-off to make sure everything is done right around the same time. Very much like a restaurant. Also, some things are just easier when you let the tool do the job for you. I never cook rice any other way than in an Instant Pot, for example.
jandrese 3y ago
As usual there is a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2767/ https://xkcd.com/2767/ I've also been surprised at how often the times listed in a recipe are outright fiction. There seems to be little reason for it except in cases where they want something in a "30 minute meals" type category that it really has no business being in. Or maybe the meal only takes 30 minutes if you have your personal sous chef do all of the chopping, prep, and oven preheat for you ahead of time.
Earw0rm 3y ago
Ditto "Jamie's 30 minute meals". Something like this: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/summer-veg-lasagne/ https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/summer-veg... The last step - 14 - is in fact two steps of (unspecified, but looks like 5-10), and 8 minutes cooking time. Which means you've about 15 minutes to do the other 13 steps. Maybe theoretically possible if you've kitchen-professional chopping speed and know exactly what you're doing, but allowing for thinking time? Hell no. And let's not talk about the amount of shopping time to get the 15 required ingredients. Most of which are fresh so you're not going to have them kicking around in a cupboard.
JustSomeNobody 3y ago
I never pay attention to the overall cook times. I read through the recipe and picture myself doing the steps to get a feel for how long it will really take.
bombcar 3y ago
I love the advertising on some of the crock pot or instant pot packets you can find in the store. It'll say like "ten minute prep time!" (ignoring the 4-8 hour cook time) or the instant pot one will say "ready in 5 minutes" when that means the pressure cooker will cook at high pressure for 5 minutes, but it can take 5-10 minutes to heat up to that point. Time is an illusion.
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  > "ten minute prep time!" (ignoring the 4-8 hour cook time) That's literally what "prep time" means though?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Sure; they're all technically legitimate, but they can be decieving.
Jtsummers 3y ago
The biggest issue with their recipes is that they, to an extent, tell you to do things in the wrong order. Picking a random recent one we had there was a step to season the meat and then heat some oil and then cook the meat. Well, heating the oil (to the point you'd want to add the meat) can take a few minutes and should have started before you even got the meat out of the package. What you actually have to do with the recipes is read the entire thing to find all the meat and produce and spice prep steps and all the measuring steps. Do all of those first while the oven is heating and maybe the pan with oil (though this can usually be delayed until you put something in the oven since the total stovetop time is usually 5-10 minutes less than the oven time). Then you start cooking, usually, with the recipes we've had, by putting a baking sheet of vegetables in to roast. Then start heating the oil (maybe a few minutes delay) and then start cooking the meat. If you do that, the prep part takes 5-10 minutes depending on your knife skills and then the cooking takes as long as the longest cooking step (usually a vegetable roasting step). You cannot execute their recipes as written in the time they suggest, but you can definitely cook the meals in the time they suggest if you read the recipe and execute it in a proper order. It would be nice, for people who aren't used to parallelizing work (most of us are engineers and programmers here, it's kind of what we do) if they laid it out differently, with a timeline or something. ---------- Prep: List all prep steps (chopping, dicing, measuring, seasoning, mixing sauces, etc.) 1 1 2 2 0123456789012345678012345 |-----------------------| 1 3 4 5 6 7 2 1. Put baking sheet of vegetables into oven 2. Add oil to pan and set to medium-high heat 3. Add onions to heated pan (stirring, etc.) 4. After 10 minutes remove onions, add oil, wait a minute and add meat (the pan will be so hot the oil needs little time to heat up) 5. Flip meat after 5 minutes 6. Remove meat from heat (have description and target temperature so people can know it's actually done), plate and cover with onions and herb butter mix (described in prep steps) 7. Remove vegetables from oven (include description of how they should look so they aren't over/undercooked) and plate ---------- That's how essentially every recipe ends up executing from what I've seen. If you read and parse the recipe steps into the actual prep portion (which they mix throughout) and heating portions (which they often list after they should be started) and cooking portions, the prep and cook times (more the cook times, prep depends on skill and focus) are pretty spot on.
- marssaxman 3y ago

egman_ekki 3y ago

You should watch a couple of Iron Chef episodes if you want to feel extra slow :D

wjnc 3y ago

Do you prepare following the steps in the guide? I’ve found that it’s much quicker to prepare based on what hits the pan when. If you do that the first items hit the pan sooner and you are in a nice rush to keep up the cutting with the cooking. Massive efficiency gain. And do some YouTube based cutting training. But that was coming from total beginner level.

episteme 3y ago

I had the same problem with Hello Fresh. I dreaded doing all the prep. However, we tried one called Green Chef and found it much more realistic. The cost of any of these services is too high for me to stomach without some sort of discount but we actually enjoyed cooking the recipes with this one while it lasted.

brnt 3y ago

Absolutely! I think I am especially slow at cutting veg, which is a compromise between my motorically undeveloped and untrained self not cutting my fingers (happens every few weeks) and speed. Multiplying by 1.5 is a safe lower limit for me. I did learn a few things through it though (how to use vinager and not to be afraid of more than 5 ingredients), which is a great outcome. Apart from a bigger selection of recipes I know.

iddan 3y ago
I would highly recommend learning how to use a chef’s knife properly. There are techniques for cutting, cleaning etc that reduce the cooking time significantly. I had the luck to be taught how to use one in school and by my dad but I always notice most people don’t know how to use it and don’t take the time to learn it (which would save them a lot of time)
- brnt 3y ago
  Tried, but I probably don't cut enough to get sufficient practice.

Aaargh20318 3y ago

I have the same experience with Marley Spoon. I always make sure I prepare everything in advance but the actual recipe wants you to do some of the cutting and dicing while stuff is already cooking and they often have impossible timing. For example, they will have you fry the meat for 2-3 minutes, clean and chop a boatload of vegetables and add them after those 2-3 minutes pass. Sometimes they even do this during a step that requires constant attention, like browning minced meat. I have no idea how they test these recipes. Maybe they are possible if you’re a professional chef in a fully equipped kitchen with plenty of space but they aren’t in my tiny kitchen where I have to spend half a minute digging the colander out from the back of the cupboard. They also assume I have an infinite amount of cutting boards and knifes. For example, in step 1 they expect me to cut a chicken breast into bite size pieces, and then in step 2 or 3 I have to cut veggies for a salad. I can’t re-use the cutting board and knife I used for raw chicken for salad without giving it a thorough washing. So I cut everything in advance and do the chicken last.

sublinear 3y ago
> They also assume I have an infinite amount of cutting boards and knifes A professional kitchen doesn't either. They wipe things down with sanitizer as they go. i.e. a damp rag from a bucket of water/steramine solution.
- Jochim 3y ago
  A professional kitchen should, at an absolute minimum, have separate cutting boards for raw meat, cooked meat, vegetables, and fish.
com2kid 3y ago
Cutting board covers, a rubber mat that lays on top of your cutting board, cut all your meats first, toss it in the sink, swap knives, cut all your veggies. Saves 5 minutes or so of prep time, well worth it IMHO. Also you can just throw it in the dishwasher and not worry about scrubbing a wood cutting board and possibly damaging it with moisture.
- 3y ago

debaserab2 3y ago

I have the exact same problem/frustration and yet my wife consistently cooks the entire meal near or at the estimated cook time. Clearly I'm not as efficient as I think I am!

eloisant 3y ago
The thing is Hello Fresh is for people who are not used to cooking. If you're used to cooking then you know enough recipes, you know what to buy and you don't need Hello Fresh. Having cooking time from actual customers instead of veteran cooks would be helpful.
samstave 3y ago
Yeah, but you have done a good job of delegating that responsibility!

Sander_Marechal 3y ago

My wife and I use the Sorted Sidekick app from the Sorted Food youtube channel. It's the only recipes I tried where the stated cooking time pretty much matches how long it really takes us.

santialbo 3y ago

Prepping everything can take a lot of time if you are not experienced. Time for things like chopping an onion can vary from 1 minute to 5 very easily.

mindentropy 3y ago
My experience is similar to yours. Prepping takes the longest time for me. I feel that cooking is all about prepping as the actual cooking on the stove takes a lot less time. Many recipes just mention the actual cooking time and some very vague prep time.

MrScruff 3y ago

I feel that the time quoted to cook the recipes is always based on an experienced chef, which is likely often not the case for things like Hello Fresh. An experienced chef will have be far more efficient at chopping/food preparation - I'm reasonable fast at chopping but still probably end up focusing over details an experienced chef would know aren't going to matter for the final recipe. Also they're probably better at managing the parallel threads of execution most recipes need, hence they always talk about boiling water for pasta far more early then I ever end up needing it.

marak830 3y ago
You are spot on. Ex chef here(quite experienced), and without notice (while watching a tv show), I'm at least twice as fast as my wife at prep. When I'm focused I'm even faster. Even then I'm probably on par if not only a touch faster than these recipes XD
- ip26 3y ago
  How long did it take you to get that fast? Any training, or just on the job?
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    I'm not the person you asked but I also am a very fast home cook due to professional cooking background. The job is the training in that kind of work. No one comes out of culinary school particularly fast and even most serious cooks don't go anyway. Cooks change restaurant often and every restaurant is a completely different set of foods and techniques. Training may teach you how to do something but doing it for hours a day months straight is where you learn to do it fast. A skilled cook at the prep table is looking at it like an F1 pit crew basically. What physical motions am I about to perform, what can be set up in advance and where should it go to reduce extraneous movement, what are the intermediate steps that can be batched together etc. There's never enough time for all the work you need to get done in the kitchen, so every day is a challenge to optimize your efficiency more than the previous one. Basically you can teach someone the right way to dice an onion but they won't be truly fast at it until they've diced a few thousand onions. Apply that to every task in the kitchen over a decade and you're pretty quick by the end of it.

wonnage 3y ago

It's tough to parallelize a recipe the first time you're cooking it - unless you have a photographic memory you're gonna have to keep checking back between steps and it's easy to miss something. Ends in getting really stressed out when you have something on the stove and realize you need to chop veg in 30 seconds. It's better the 2nd or 3rd time but I think with these meal plan services you're cooking something different every day, so it's hard to develop that familiarity. Ideally you'd follow their steps and take as long as you need the first time, and then go out and buy groceries and do it again, but that probably defeats the purpose of using such a service anyway

bruckie 3y ago
That's exactly how I'm using the service: get ideas for new meals during the promo, then cancel and make the ones I liked myself with ingredients from the store. So I do have some hope that I'll get faster. :)

zamalek 3y ago

On the contrary, my wife grabs recipes from Instagram (usually the Whole 30 crowd, but not exclusively). We've found their 20 minute recipes incredibly successful and tasty, and rarely cook anything else. Off the top of my head, one we get a lot of our recipes from is "deliciously Ella." I think it helps that each post has a picture of the meal, which suggests that the author has actually made it themselves.

carabiner 3y ago
I tried a TikTok recipe, feta with tomatoes pasta, and it was delicious. Will try the salmon rice bowl at some point too.
- samstave 3y ago
  If you like salmon, and have a costco membership, one of the best, easiest, fastest and affordable meals: Get the salmon with the (3) butter-herb balls on top of it. (They used to be ~$19 on avg but now they are closer to $29 due to inflation) Get a Ceasar Salad Kit from the walk-in fridge. ~$7.99 (these used to be $5.99) Cook the salmon in the oven at 425 for 27 minutes. Make the salad kit. Get a bowl and serve salad in an individual bowl and put a piece of the salmon on top. Serves 4. SUPER good. But the salad doesnt do well as left overs, so if you're not going to finish it that night - make the salad in individual portions to avoid a wilted mess the next day. Also, if you have wimpy-limpy veggies (such as celery) put into an ice bath in a bowl in the fridge for a while (an hour or two) and it will become crisp again.

gustavorg 3y ago

Well, we know this is not true. At least Armando Scannone had a team of 4 cooks to make and rehearse each and every one of the recipes in his famous cookbook [1]. Armando Scannone has a famous Venezuelan cookbook, it is the obligatory reference for those who want to make Venezuelan dishes. I have personally tried many of the dishes and the recipes are correct and the result is just as the book indicates. [1] https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Armando-Scannone/dp/B011YUALZS https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Armando-Scannone/dp/B011YUALZS

fastball 3y ago
Are you replying to the right comment? Armando Scannone's cookbook seems almost entirely unrelated to GC's point.
bombcar 3y ago
Four skilled cooks will be able to complete recipes much faster than even a good home cook. It's like watching an electrician wire a bathroom in two hours and assuming anyone can do it. They can; after years of experience and knowing what to do, what not to do, and what to avoid.

mberning 3y ago

I love the 5 minute prep ones. I always joke to my wife, 5 minutes of prep, for a michelin star. Call me chef Marco.

k8sToGo 3y ago

Hello Fresh is horrible. They keep spamming and calling after I cancelled my trial.

ridgered4 3y ago

I remember Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals usually featured her pulling some ingredients she'd already chopped up or soaked in something the night before out from the fridge. Apparently the time spend yesterday didn't count against the clock.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 3y ago
There's something to be said for it, but you have to plan ahead; most people who are starting out trying to cook are very bad at planning ahead. A cookbook that focused on "here's stuff you can pre-prep that can be used in multiple meals" would be nice.

tester89 3y ago

IME Hello Fresh and Gousto were always double their quoted time. 40 minutes was almost always 80 minutes. There is just one exception, namely that Gousto's 10 minute recipes are actually 30 minutes, but that's explained if you notice that they're often 15 minute recipes and they're lying and claiming they're 10 minutes (they have 5 minute, 10 minute and then 20 minute recipes, but no 15 minute recipes, which suggests that they round down for 15).

conductr 3y ago

Mirrors my experience. Prep work is the most underestimated part. I think they start with everything out on the counter and unpackaged and with necessary tooling lined up and ready. But those things take time. For me, something like mincing garlic cloves takes a solid 5-10 minutes alone and is one of the things that consistently stands out as they must have started with minced garlic to get to this time estimate.

_fat_santa 3y ago
I found that it really just comes down to how much experience you have. I started cooking a lot this year, mostly because it beats taking my girlfriend out to dinner every week. When I started I was very slow and dinners would take me in excess of an hour, mostly because I was just very unskilled in the basics of cooking. As time has gone on I found that making dinners took me less and less time, part of it is knowing the right techniques for preparing certain foods, others are little ergonomic things like getting a knife magnet and ensuring all the tools you need are at your fingertips. It's also knowing how long food cooks for, what you have to keep an eye on and what you can just let cook. The first time I made smash burgers at home it took me in excess of an hour to prep and cook everything and yesterday I was able to do the same in about 20 minutes.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Nah that's a perfect example of how experience & technique can speed things up dramatically. Here watch ole JP do it in about 90 seconds even while slowing down to explain it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5h1pDHhzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5h1pDHhzs
- conductr 3y ago
  That’s not what an average home cook can do regarding knife skills. These services and recipes should be written for their audiences which are likely typical home chefs that don’t handle knifes that well. I’ve been cooking 40 years and have certainly tried to use a knife that way and it always feels unsafe to me. Also, typically requires a very sharp set of knifes which I do keep but I don’t think the average house does.

balderdash 3y ago

Don’t disagree that some of the recipe times are very optimistic, but watching friends cook gives me hives at how inefficient they are, handful of things to think about about that will massively speed up your cooking time: 1)read the recipe and spend a couple of min visualizing the steps, what you’ll need and writing out the timing and grouping chores. 2) do some mise en place[a] (buy $50 of small duralex glass bowls for this, they’re great). E.g. do all your dry good measuring, then wet measuring, vegetable chopping in groups. 3. Set up efficiently (mise en place above), watching someone go to the cupboard 15 times and then the fridge 8 times for things in their recipe is a huge waste. Use a trash bowl so you’re not running to the sink or garbage all the time. 4. Learn knife skills (a lot of cooking schools offer a stand alone class). The right way and the wrong way to dice an onion or Julianne a pepper are like 80%+ reductions in time spent on a task… 5. Clean while you cook. You’ll be shocked at the time savings if you combine these elements. A. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place

savanaly 3y ago
Biggest thing for me is your #5. When I watch others cook I see a lot of downtime. 30 seconds here waiting for oil in pan to get hot, 30 seconds there chatting with me while their water boils, it adds up to minutes and minutes that could have been spent washing dishes and cleaning surfaces. For me the perfect cook is when the last thing comes off the heat it's the only dirty dish, I can plate it, wash the dish in the sink, then leave the kitchen with the food and the kitchen cleaner than when I went in.
- fooblaster 3y ago
  1. There is no "mis" for hello fresh recipes, literally everything is presented in a bag to you. There's often no measuring or any dependencies other than oil, salt, and pepper. 2. cleaning while you cook is not a time saver for producing the food, only a time saver when considering overall time in the kitchen. In my experience with meal kits over the last two years, the biggest time savers are nothing like what you said. 1. Meal kits try hard to not use multiple pans, as not all kitchens have that. Parallelize cooking where possible. 2. Parallelize chopping with cooking by getting some help. 3. Pre heat your oven before actively starting cooking in the kitchen, ie don't stand idle. Even still the recipe times are incredibly optimistic.

grvdrm 3y ago

I almost never look at recipe timing, but anecdotally, I know I'm slower. That said, I spent time as a line chef in a kitchen, and it gave me some useful skills in kitchen: cooking lots of things at the same time. These days, I'll fire up my grill, have something on the, and maybe something in the oven, and have done it enough times to know when to start/stir/turn-off to make sure everything is done right around the same time. Very much like a restaurant. Also, some things are just easier when you let the tool do the job for you. I never cook rice any other way than in an Instant Pot, for example.

jandrese 3y ago

As usual there is a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2767/ https://xkcd.com/2767/ I've also been surprised at how often the times listed in a recipe are outright fiction. There seems to be little reason for it except in cases where they want something in a "30 minute meals" type category that it really has no business being in. Or maybe the meal only takes 30 minutes if you have your personal sous chef do all of the chopping, prep, and oven preheat for you ahead of time.

Earw0rm 3y ago

Ditto "Jamie's 30 minute meals". Something like this: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/summer-veg-lasagne/ https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/summer-veg... The last step - 14 - is in fact two steps of (unspecified, but looks like 5-10), and 8 minutes cooking time. Which means you've about 15 minutes to do the other 13 steps. Maybe theoretically possible if you've kitchen-professional chopping speed and know exactly what you're doing, but allowing for thinking time? Hell no. And let's not talk about the amount of shopping time to get the 15 required ingredients. Most of which are fresh so you're not going to have them kicking around in a cupboard.

JustSomeNobody 3y ago

I never pay attention to the overall cook times. I read through the recipe and picture myself doing the steps to get a feel for how long it will really take.

bombcar 3y ago

I love the advertising on some of the crock pot or instant pot packets you can find in the store. It'll say like "ten minute prep time!" (ignoring the 4-8 hour cook time) or the instant pot one will say "ready in 5 minutes" when that means the pressure cooker will cook at high pressure for 5 minutes, but it can take 5-10 minutes to heat up to that point. Time is an illusion.

0xffff2 3y ago
> "ten minute prep time!" (ignoring the 4-8 hour cook time) That's literally what "prep time" means though?
- bombcar 3y ago
  Sure; they're all technically legitimate, but they can be decieving.

Jtsummers 3y ago

The biggest issue with their recipes is that they, to an extent, tell you to do things in the wrong order. Picking a random recent one we had there was a step to season the meat and then heat some oil and then cook the meat. Well, heating the oil (to the point you'd want to add the meat) can take a few minutes and should have started before you even got the meat out of the package. What you actually have to do with the recipes is read the entire thing to find all the meat and produce and spice prep steps and all the measuring steps. Do all of those first while the oven is heating and maybe the pan with oil (though this can usually be delayed until you put something in the oven since the total stovetop time is usually 5-10 minutes less than the oven time). Then you start cooking, usually, with the recipes we've had, by putting a baking sheet of vegetables in to roast. Then start heating the oil (maybe a few minutes delay) and then start cooking the meat. If you do that, the prep part takes 5-10 minutes depending on your knife skills and then the cooking takes as long as the longest cooking step (usually a vegetable roasting step). You cannot execute their recipes as written in the time they suggest, but you can definitely cook the meals in the time they suggest if you read the recipe and execute it in a proper order. It would be nice, for people who aren't used to parallelizing work (most of us are engineers and programmers here, it's kind of what we do) if they laid it out differently, with a timeline or something. ---------- Prep: List all prep steps (chopping, dicing, measuring, seasoning, mixing sauces, etc.) 1 1 2 2 0123456789012345678012345 |-----------------------| 1 3 4 5 6 7 2 1. Put baking sheet of vegetables into oven 2. Add oil to pan and set to medium-high heat 3. Add onions to heated pan (stirring, etc.) 4. After 10 minutes remove onions, add oil, wait a minute and add meat (the pan will be so hot the oil needs little time to heat up) 5. Flip meat after 5 minutes 6. Remove meat from heat (have description and target temperature so people can know it's actually done), plate and cover with onions and herb butter mix (described in prep steps) 7. Remove vegetables from oven (include description of how they should look so they aren't over/undercooked) and plate ---------- That's how essentially every recipe ends up executing from what I've seen. If you read and parse the recipe steps into the actual prep portion (which they mix throughout) and heating portions (which they often list after they should be started) and cooking portions, the prep and cook times (more the cook times, prep depends on skill and focus) are pretty spot on.

marssaxman 3y ago