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I like good food, so I’ve started to follow recipes on sites like this one. However the thing that no one talks about is that cooking “properly” takes a huge a

I like good food, so I’ve started to follow recipes on sites like this one. However the thing that no one talks about is that cooking “properly” takes a huge amount of time cumulatively for a single person or even a small nuclear family. A blogger will talk about a quick little dish. First of all it is going to take you longer because you haven’t spent the last decade chopping onions. Second, even as written this “quick dish” is 15 to make, 15 minutes to eat, and another 10 minutes of cleanup. That’s 40 minutes per meal for a total of 2 hours a day. Uber eats is just 5 minutes to order and clean up plus 15 minutes to eat, for a total of 1 hour a day. That doesn’t even get into the extra time shopping for high quality and sometimes obscure ingredients, learning these recipes in the first place, and so on. And again that’s assuming only quick little dishes. So best case scenario net one hour a day every day to eat high quality home cooked meals. That’s 6% of your waking life that’s not available for work, exercise, dating, playing with your kids, calling your parents, reading a book, etc, etc, etc. Like so many things in our atomized world, the math has gotten worse as we’ve discarded large, extended families. If that cooking time is divided among several people, feeds even more, and is often taken as an opportunity to teach and bond, then things start to look a lot different.

babarock 3y ago
You get better at it the more you do it, and naturally with experience you'll notice it takes less and less time. That being said, I agree with you, it does take a lot of time. To me, the switch occurred when I stopped considering this time "wasted" and instead consider it fulfilling. I actively look for the time I'll spend cooking each day, I believe it's a good use of my time and I don't try to rush through it.
- kqr 3y ago
  > To me, the switch occurred when I stopped considering this time "wasted" and instead consider it fulfilling. This is how it works for me also. We involved our children from a very early age, so they can also perform basic tasks like watch a pan or cut soft things into pieces (with only a little supervision), which frees up even more time.
mariusor 3y ago
Cooking every meal from scratch is a recipe for disaster. Despite what this blogger tells you, reheated, next day pasta is still delicious, so you are allowed to cook more than one serving per person. My go to pasta takes maybe 45m to cook, and it results in 4-5 servings, which is two meals for two people: 1Kg of tomatoes, that you blanch beforehand (pour boiling water over the tomatoes after you score their skins in a cross, leave to sit). Peal the tomatoes and dice them into as small chunks as you want. In a wide pan (even a wok), fry some bacon cubes (or pancetta if you want to be authentic) in oil or butter, whichever. When they have reached a level of crispiness you're OK with, dump the cubed tomatoes in and cover with a lid. (If you're feeling fancy, you can take the bacon out and add at the end, I rarely do) Put a pack of pasta to boil - I usually use 500g of fusilli (don't buy Barilla, those guys are assholes), and as the guy says, make sure the water is very salty, but not bitterly so. In small bowl crush 5-6 cloves of garlic. Pour about a spoonfull of oil and stir with some rough salt until it becomes a little like mayo in consistency. Dump another spoonfull of sour cream and homogenize. Take the lid of the pan and use a potato masher to crush the tomato cubes into a nice sauce. It does not need to be perfect, but make an effort. By this time, the pasta should be close to done. When that happens strain the pasta (keep some water if you want). Dump the garlic cream in the sauce, homogenize (maybe with the water) and then add the pasta. (The longer the garlic cooks, the less impact it will have on the overall flavour, my preference is full garlic) Stir vigorously until pasta is well covered in sauce then take off the stove. Dump a bunch of grated hard cheese on it (I use about 250g of Grana Padano, or in dire straight some sharp Cheddar) and stir until it coats everything evenly. Ta-da, you have pasta! PS. Apologies to any nonne that I offended with my interpretation of authentic pasta.
padjo 3y ago
If it takes you 10 minutes to clean up after cooking a 15 minute meal you must be cooking like the Swedish chef from the muppets.
fullspectrumdev 3y ago
You get faster/more organised at doing the preparing steps for cooking with practice, and if you clean as you go it can be quite efficient. You don’t need chef level knife skills, but you can become competent quickly enough and with good sharp knives it’s not hard. The one thing I will say though is a lot of the time estimates in recipes are absolute bollocks - my biggest annoyance is when it comes to caramelising onions. “Oh ten minutes” the food blogger says. lol no. That’s a muuuuuuch longer job!
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> So best case scenario net one hour a day every day to eat high quality home cooked meals. That’s 6% of your waking life that’s not available for work, exercise, dating, playing with your kids, calling your parents, reading a book, etc, etc, etc. For me cooking (generally, making stuff to eat) is a hobby. I don't have kids but that just makes it a little less enjoyable because I don't have a large family to share my cooking with. Otherwise I'm happy for the chance to get away from a screen and have some me-time doing something that satisfies my senses (I especially like adding each spice separately to the pan and taking a biig sniff as it cooks - I'm a food hedonist). In any case I really don't experience it as wasted time. If I'm tired from work or I'm late at home, I just cook something simple or make sure I have left overs. And it doesn't need to be a hobby. Any way you see it, cooking a good meal is just a great way to care about yourself and your loved ones and make them happy. Uber Eats can't do that.
- kqr 3y ago
  > I don't have kids but that just makes it a little less enjoyable because I don't have a large family to share my cooking with. If you're planning to have children at some point, you should know that some days they will do their utmost to ruin your cooking time and when you finally pull through anyway they will ask to eat something else. ;)
iopq 3y ago
There's still cleanup for Uber eats, unless you want splatters and garbage everywhere. I find unwrapping stuff and setting on the table takes time too. Looking for good restaurants also takes time, sometimes I start doing an order and find out the Italian restaurant doesn't have the pasta or sauce I want and have to restart my search. Also, note that you shouldn't heat up ANY kind of plastic components in the microwave. They are not "microwave safe" since they release the plastics into the food anyway. If I have to transfer to another plate and heat it up, there goes the clean-up time argument, I have to wash that dish later

babarock 3y ago

You get better at it the more you do it, and naturally with experience you'll notice it takes less and less time. That being said, I agree with you, it does take a lot of time. To me, the switch occurred when I stopped considering this time "wasted" and instead consider it fulfilling. I actively look for the time I'll spend cooking each day, I believe it's a good use of my time and I don't try to rush through it.

kqr 3y ago
> To me, the switch occurred when I stopped considering this time "wasted" and instead consider it fulfilling. This is how it works for me also. We involved our children from a very early age, so they can also perform basic tasks like watch a pan or cut soft things into pieces (with only a little supervision), which frees up even more time.

mariusor 3y ago

Cooking every meal from scratch is a recipe for disaster. Despite what this blogger tells you, reheated, next day pasta is still delicious, so you are allowed to cook more than one serving per person. My go to pasta takes maybe 45m to cook, and it results in 4-5 servings, which is two meals for two people: 1Kg of tomatoes, that you blanch beforehand (pour boiling water over the tomatoes after you score their skins in a cross, leave to sit). Peal the tomatoes and dice them into as small chunks as you want. In a wide pan (even a wok), fry some bacon cubes (or pancetta if you want to be authentic) in oil or butter, whichever. When they have reached a level of crispiness you're OK with, dump the cubed tomatoes in and cover with a lid. (If you're feeling fancy, you can take the bacon out and add at the end, I rarely do) Put a pack of pasta to boil - I usually use 500g of fusilli (don't buy Barilla, those guys are assholes), and as the guy says, make sure the water is very salty, but not bitterly so. In small bowl crush 5-6 cloves of garlic. Pour about a spoonfull of oil and stir with some rough salt until it becomes a little like mayo in consistency. Dump another spoonfull of sour cream and homogenize. Take the lid of the pan and use a potato masher to crush the tomato cubes into a nice sauce. It does not need to be perfect, but make an effort. By this time, the pasta should be close to done. When that happens strain the pasta (keep some water if you want). Dump the garlic cream in the sauce, homogenize (maybe with the water) and then add the pasta. (The longer the garlic cooks, the less impact it will have on the overall flavour, my preference is full garlic) Stir vigorously until pasta is well covered in sauce then take off the stove. Dump a bunch of grated hard cheese on it (I use about 250g of Grana Padano, or in dire straight some sharp Cheddar) and stir until it coats everything evenly. Ta-da, you have pasta! PS. Apologies to any nonne that I offended with my interpretation of authentic pasta.

padjo 3y ago

If it takes you 10 minutes to clean up after cooking a 15 minute meal you must be cooking like the Swedish chef from the muppets.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago

You get faster/more organised at doing the preparing steps for cooking with practice, and if you clean as you go it can be quite efficient. You don’t need chef level knife skills, but you can become competent quickly enough and with good sharp knives it’s not hard. The one thing I will say though is a lot of the time estimates in recipes are absolute bollocks - my biggest annoyance is when it comes to caramelising onions. “Oh ten minutes” the food blogger says. lol no. That’s a muuuuuuch longer job!

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> So best case scenario net one hour a day every day to eat high quality home cooked meals. That’s 6% of your waking life that’s not available for work, exercise, dating, playing with your kids, calling your parents, reading a book, etc, etc, etc. For me cooking (generally, making stuff to eat) is a hobby. I don't have kids but that just makes it a little less enjoyable because I don't have a large family to share my cooking with. Otherwise I'm happy for the chance to get away from a screen and have some me-time doing something that satisfies my senses (I especially like adding each spice separately to the pan and taking a biig sniff as it cooks - I'm a food hedonist). In any case I really don't experience it as wasted time. If I'm tired from work or I'm late at home, I just cook something simple or make sure I have left overs. And it doesn't need to be a hobby. Any way you see it, cooking a good meal is just a great way to care about yourself and your loved ones and make them happy. Uber Eats can't do that.

kqr 3y ago
> I don't have kids but that just makes it a little less enjoyable because I don't have a large family to share my cooking with. If you're planning to have children at some point, you should know that some days they will do their utmost to ruin your cooking time and when you finally pull through anyway they will ask to eat something else. ;)

iopq 3y ago

There's still cleanup for Uber eats, unless you want splatters and garbage everywhere. I find unwrapping stuff and setting on the table takes time too. Looking for good restaurants also takes time, sometimes I start doing an order and find out the Italian restaurant doesn't have the pasta or sauce I want and have to restart my search. Also, note that you shouldn't heat up ANY kind of plastic components in the microwave. They are not "microwave safe" since they release the plastics into the food anyway. If I have to transfer to another plate and heat it up, there goes the clean-up time argument, I have to wash that dish later