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Kitchen optimizations

• comrade1234 9mo ago
  Right now I have a large and stylish open kitchen but there are times where I miss having a galley kitchen, where I could stand in one place and reach everything I needed - pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, knives and accessories on magnetic racks on the walls, fridge contents reachable while standing at the stove... somehow it even had enough prep space.
  • lotsofpulp 9mo ago
    If you cook with a partner, a kitchen with a wide enough aisle so that one can open a dishwasher and also open a cabinet on the opposite side makes life so much easier, since it means it is also wide enough for 2 people to move past each other easily. Big tub sink on one side, range on the opposite side of aisle, and at least 3ft/1m of countertop space on both sides of each those is my ideal. One side of the sink will have a dish rack, leaving 3 sides. That means 3 available spaces for prep, eventually turning into 2 as dirty kitchenware piles up next to the sink.
  • raffraffraff 9mo ago
    I have a large open plan kitchen with one counter surrounded by hanging pots and pans, knives on a magnetic wall mount, all chopping boards stored vertically in racks and most of the condiments on a wall rack or in the drawers
• pandemic_region 9mo ago
  Optimize why? So that we can spend the extra seconds on our social media apps? People need to learn to slow down and not try to save twenty seconds when boiling water.
  • adammarples 9mo ago
    No, boiling water in the kettle literally saves you 10 minutes of hanging around every single time you cook, it's a no brainier.
    • Swizec 9mo ago
      The time it takes for water to boil is your time to prep all the ingredients or clean the kitchen. In cooking there is no waiting.
      • adammarples 9mo ago
        Boiling the kettle means I can make pasta and a sauce in about 12 minutes, boiling on the stove just adds tons of time. Given that the kettle is next to the stove it's simply self sabotaging not to use it, one button press.
        • quesera 9mo ago
          This will vary depending on the type of cooktop you have, and whether you have a 240V kettle. Electric coil cooktops, and 120V kettles are the slowest. Gas/induction cooktops, and 240V kettles are the quickest.
          • SoftTalker 9mo ago
            Yeah huge difference if you have 240V mains. A 120V electric kettle is not much of a timesaver (though perhaps still worth something if it frees up a place on the cooktop that you need for something else).
  • purrcat259 9mo ago
    Anecdotally, with two young children (5, 1), the savings add up and mean twenty more seconds with them or not being overwhelmed after they're asleep with the state of the house.
    • Theaetetus 9mo ago
      Indeed.
  • vlod 9mo ago
    Why should I optimize my code? To save 420ms for what? I dunno. I try to optimize everything in life, maybe it's the engineer in me (I find it fun and interesting how people do things inefficiently). I also try and measure ingredients exactly (e.g. 420g of flour, not 419g or 421g), however that might be some low form of OCD. /shrug Whether I use that extra time or not doesn't really matter for me.
• farhanhubble 9mo ago
  I find kitchenwork provides good case studies for computational thinking. Thinking about stacking dishes by their sizes leads to a tour of sorting algorithms and datastructures. Thinking about predicting the prices of different preparations that use the same ingredients leads to principal component analysis. There's also the application of computational methods to cooking.
• Mikhail_Edoshin 9mo ago
  I think B. F. Skinner liked that sort of things. (In "Walden Two" he gives a rather detailed description of a contraption to conveniently carry around a glass full of a hot beverage without risk of spilling; I'm positive it was one of his inventions.)
  • leobg 9mo ago
    Nice to see a B. F. Skinner reference here. The forgotten king of “making do”.
  • yboris 9mo ago
    Walden Two is one hidden gem! I love this book.
• jacknews 9mo ago
  This is great keep going. I find mis-en-place is a great optimization, especially if you have kids. For hot water, I have a 2L thermos which I keep filled with boiling water to make hot drinks, with a quick reboil if necessary, and also to use as cooking water. I think there are plumbed in versions of this which would be even better. Bread-making - I just use a bread machine to make day-to-day bread (specials hand baked etc on weekends sometimes.) For the daily, I pre-measure ingredients (both wet and dry) for 10+ loaves, individually packaged (kids are a great production line again). The to make the bread, just throw in the packets and press the buttons... No doubt most people already do this, but for some reason my wife can't get it .. keep everything in the same place all the time. It really wastes time and 'stressergy' to have to hunt for the measuring spoons or the molasses or whatever because they were put back in a different place. I'm sure commercial chefs could add a huge list of tricks that are still applicable at home to this.
  • wiether 9mo ago
    It's _mise en place_, with an e since it's feminine and without dashes. Signed: A pedantic French guy (pleonasm)
    • jacknews 9mo ago
      Thanks. Should I include the underscores?
  • SoftTalker 9mo ago
    Clean as you go is a big one for me. I hate having a big cleanup at the end of a meal prep.
  • zcw100 9mo ago
    Mise en place is ok sometimes but it also generates a lot unnecessary cleaning.
• xnx 9mo ago
  A foot pedal faucet is the biggest optimization I need to make. It's like giving yourself a third arm in many situations.
  • esafak 9mo ago
    I use a touch-sensitive faucet. Either way, this is a big upgrade given how often one uses a faucet.
  • gazook89 9mo ago
    I so desperately want this, I think about it about 5 times a week and probably mention it to my wife as often. But in my old small house I doubt I could ever get one set up. Much better than a touch less one.
    • tptacek 9mo ago
      It's just a standard plumbing fitting, and it engages with the plumbing below your actual faucet. Space shouldn't be an issue?
    • xnx 9mo ago
      I bought an one that attaches to the source line to the faucet, but I'm nervous to install it for risk of leaks.
      • frantathefranta 9mo ago
        Teflon tape is your friend when plumbing things together.
        • xnx 9mo ago
          Definitely. I'm more worried about the valve in the pedal being faulty and leaking.
        • throwway120385 9mo ago
          Not always. It only works with FIP/MIP connections. If it's a compression fitting you're just wasting money.
• sokoloff 9mo ago
  One thing we do is to load a new dishwasher tablet immediately upon emptying the dishes. Result: If there’s a tablet: it’s dirty. If there’s no tablet: it’s clean.
  • ajb 9mo ago
    That's a good one. One I tend to do is, once I know i will run the dishwasher overnight, I will set it to run with a delay. That way, even if I forget to put in the last few items, it's going to run and I will not run out of clean stuff. (My dishwasher is fairly slow, as it's a built-in one and can't pop open to dry).
  • astura 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • Extropy_ 9mo ago
      I understand your confusion. If you clean off and rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher, it can sometimes get confusing
      • dolmen 9mo ago
        I don't get the logic of cleaning dishes BEFORE putting them in the dishwasher.
        • bgbntty2 9mo ago
          I think people don't want to clog their dishwasher with pieces of food. If I have a couple pieces of spaghetti, a part of a leaf and half a chickpea stuck on the plate, I would remove them with a paper towel. Not sure why anyone would rinse it afterwards, though. That reminds me of people who clean before the maid comes. I've never had a maid, but I've read that people do the easiest things themselves so the maid, who is paid by the hour, has to do the harder things only.
        • kj4211cash 9mo ago
• cranium 9mo ago
  I've found that cooking extra food with the intent of freezing it in individual portions is a game changer for when I'm alone at home - my fiancée can also pack them for lunch. Rice, curries, ragoûts are really nice to get out of the freezer, put on a plate in the microwave and eat a few minutes later. Look at Souper Cubes (or any silicon knockoff) for the molds.
  • motbus3 9mo ago
    Batch cooking is the only way to have two working adults. I love to cook though, so at home, one cooks the batch part and the other does a different meal for the weekend. We think our cooking is much better than almost all restaurants we go (and we heard from others that our guests usually thinks the same).
  • econ 9mo ago
    Living with a shared kitchen I had a neighbor (+gf) once who hated cooking. His solution was to cook only once per month. It was quite hilarious, he made about 40-60 meals in one day. Giant pots everywhere. He would print a menu card for the month with all the 3-4 course meals. He would set the table, light candles, poor the wine and argued what to microwave.
    • econ 9mo ago
      I forgot to add that he bagged the food, freezes it in containers then pulls the brick out of the container. That way they are all the same width and height and he can fit 150 in his freezer. And last but not least, he also printed a checklist and a map to navigate the freezer.
• wiether 9mo ago
  I'm not sure I understand the thing about boiling water: 1. Put a modest amount of water in the pot and turn the stove element on. 2. Put a modest amount of water in the electric kettle and turn it on. 3. If one boils before the other, either combine them (if the other is nearly boiling) or add a little more water to the already-boiling one. What happens if they boil at the same time? Don't combine them? What happens if pot boils before kettle? Add water to the pot and forget about the kettle? And overall boiling water seems to be the worst example to pick to show how to optimize cooking. You can't over-boil water, so depending on your appliance, if you don't start using your boiling water as soon as it boils, it will either stop heating and start loosing temperature, or it will keep boiling, water will be lost through evaporation and energy consumed needlessly. But if your focus is time, then boiling is not an issue. You can do whatever you want during heating. Furthermore, with electric kettle and induction stove, you'll hardly have time to chop a few onions or clean a few carrots before water is ready. I've seen people needing half to a full hour to make pasta with a store-bought sauce, and thought that was crazy, but that's because they weren't doing things in parallel and/or not in the right order. Like, if you plan to make pasta, first you put water to boil, then you get your pasta and everything else while its heating. And don't wait for your pasta to be ready to get your strainer. Same for the sauce. Get it and open it while the pasta are cooking.
  • Swizec 9mo ago
    Here’s how you optimize the time it takes for things to boil: You spend that time prepping ingredients, cooking another dish, or cleaning the kitchen. In cooking there’s no such thing as waiting.
    • technothrasher 9mo ago
      > In cooking there’s no such thing as waiting. I tend to go hyper mis en place when I cook. So by the time "active" cooking is taking place, it's a pretty chill affair and I often end up reading my book in the bits of down time.
      • Swizec 9mo ago
• motbus3 9mo ago
  there are indications that cooking and doing other house related chores are actually beneficial for the mind. Cooking is specially important. I don't know the reasons as I only read parts of papers and posts about it, but it seems something related to human brain evolution, but I am no expert. If someone knows more I would be happy to know
• briHass 9mo ago
  The water boiling one doesn't make any sense. One of those devices (stove or kettle) transfers more heat per unit of time into the water. Just use that device for the full amount of water. An induction range would remove the need for transferring boiling water around. At least in the US, that's the fastest device, since countertop kettles are limited to 1.8kW or so. Induction 'burners' usually are 2.5-4kW, and assuming the right cookware, much better at transferring that energy into the water (and not the air like a gas burner)
  • swiftcoder 9mo ago
    Come to Europe, we have the 3+ kw kettles!
    • wiether 9mo ago
      Even 10 second kettle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDLw1Rx_cAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDLw1Rx_cAI (In 2014 they were still in the EU)
    • loloquwowndueo 9mo ago
      No fair because you also have the 240V outlets :(
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      • alexchamberlain 9mo ago
        You can have 240V outlets too... at least, a lot of woodworkers seem to install them in their garages. Are they legal in the kitchen?
        • devilbunny 9mo ago
          Yes, but it's hard to find the 240V appliances here except for clothes dryers, ovens, or built-in ranges/cooktops. Since a full induction cooktop is very expensive, most people who have induction will have a single portable hob.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• doix 9mo ago
  I had similar thoughts to the author, but I opted to just optimize those actions out of my life. If you only eat Huel(or any other powdered food thing) at home then pretty much everything described in the article is no longer an issue. No more dealing with dishes, dishwashers, stray items on the table, boiling water etc. The only thing you need to worry about is cleaning your one huel cup which you can do right before you prepare your next shake. I did it for a few years, eating breakfast + lunch at the office and then Huel for dinner or eating out at restaurant.
  • carlosjobim 9mo ago
    After seeing a little child drink his Huel™ from his cupped hands, I threw away my Huel™ cup. It was my only possession.
• bgbntty2 9mo ago
  I have a few things that I can add. If you just want an adequate meal with the least amount of work, invest in: * multicooker, one with a pressure cooking setting. You just have to press a few buttons and forget about it. If you know how much time it takes to cook something (for example - chickpeas, 26 minutes), you just set it for 26 minutes and go do something else. The multicooker will keep it warm for a few hours after it's done. No need to turn off the stove or anything like that. There's hardly any vapor released. You can make lots of dishes under pressure - pasta, lentils, chickpeas, beans... You can steam (almost?) any vegetable, as well. For beans and chickpeas the total prep time is hours, but the actual human time is minutes. Just put them under water for a few hours (takes ~30 seconds), then drain and put into the multicooker (takes ~1 minute). It takes a few minutes of actual work, but it also lets you forget about it, as it won't over-boil or anything like that. I can put something and go out, come back after a few hours and have a hot meal ready. I only use my regular stove top to make popcorn once in a while. The only downside is not being able to add different ingredients after the cooking has begun, as it's under pressure. And the "26" minutes above don't include the time it takes to reach the required pressure and the time it takes to release it. You can speed both steps by boiling water in a kettle before putting in the multicooker and by using the release valve after the cooking is done. * bread maker - literally put water, oil, salt, sugar, flour and yeast one after the other, press a few buttons, wait a few hours and you get a perfect bread. Beats any recipe, including the "no-knead" ones, in terms of convenience. I can make better bread with lots of kneading and resting and whatnot, but the bread that comes out is good enough for me, so I don't see myself ever making bread by hand again. If I lose all my possessions and have to rebuild from scratch, I would buy a cheap multicooker first, then a bread maker. Then, I'd think about a regular stove, a microwave and so on. Another "optimization" is keeping everything in jars. Flour, coffee, sugar, cocoa, condiments, beans, oats - everything. It's much easier to see what and how much you have of everything, it's transparent, you can put labels on the jars (cheap price tags/stickers), you can pour from the jars easily, you can scoop with them with a spoon. No messy paper or plastic wraps. I don't get why people keep things in their original packaging - a bulky, wrinkled plastic or paper wrap that obscures the view behind it, obscures the view inside and makes it harder to scoop with a spoon. For jars you use frequently, keep a spoon inside. I have a spoon in my coffee jar. I still have to get another spoon to swirl my coffee when it's done, so the sugar dissolves, but it's nice to not care about that when you're transferring the coffee from the jar to the moka pot or coffee maker. And finally, keep similar ingredients near each other. The condiments, the teas, the legumes, the flours, the sauces. Just designate a place for each type of food. You can always adjust it later. In my cupboard the sugary condiments (sugar, molasses, xylitol, honey, etc.) are on the left, the salty ones are on the right (various types of salt, as well as salty mixes) and the other ones are in the middle (herbs and whatnot). Above that the most protein-y things are on the left, the cereal-y things are in the middle (oats, various seeds) and misc. things are on the right. The idea is that whenever I buy something, when I come home I immediately pour it into a jar and put it where it belongs. That way everything is pretty and organized. Queries like "how much lentils do I have left" are answered in seconds. The overhead of keeping the jars clean is minimal, as you don't have to clean the jars all the time - if you had a jar of lentils that's now empty, just leave it "dirty". It's not unhygienic, especially if you'll put lentils or other food that you'll boil in it later, anyway. I clean them once they get visible dirty - if I've touched them with greasy fingers, for example.
• orev 9mo ago
  A few things: * Garbage bowl: allocate a mixing bowl on the counter to collect garbage and drop cuttings and other refuse in there. Saves you from having to go to the trash bin every time. * Preheat watery vegetables in the microwave. Things like onions, mushrooms, etc. are mostly water, and you can avoid having to wait for them to reduce in a pan by nuking them for 2 minutes in the microwave first. * When boiling water or cooking almost anything in a pot, cover it with the lid! It will trap the heat inside the pot and boil/cook faster. So many people don’t use the lid just to save themselves from having to wash it. The only time not to use the lid is if you need to reduce the liquid or allow volatiles to escape. * Cooking bigger batches of food takes essentially the same amount of time as smaller batches. Make portions big enough that you can get at least two or three more meals from it. * Learn to use your oven! Too many people get enamored with single use gadgets when the oven already does so many things. People complain that it takes too long to heat up but it really doesn’t. * Keep your knives sharp: Do NOT use an electric sharpener, just a simple drag over a stone every few months is probably all you need. A sharp knife is SAFER than a dull one. * Throw away all cutting boards not made of wood or plastic (dump the plastic too if you’re concerned about it). Any cutting board made of glass, marble, metal, or any other hard material is destroying your knives.
  • hexbin010 9mo ago
    > Any cutting board made of glass, marble, metal I've never understood this. Those things are/were just used to prevent counter-top damage here in the UK (hot pans, things that would stain etc). We never considered them chopping boards. Did the USA not get the memo?
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • reaperducer 9mo ago
      We never considered them chopping boards. Demonstrably false: https://www.ebay.com/itm/114968917182 https://www.ebay.com/itm/114968917182 Perhaps do a basic internet search before speaking for an entire nation.
    • 9mo ago
• esafak 9mo ago
  I cook every day and I did not relate to this. Make frequently-used items accessible close to where they will be needed. Install drawers throughout the kitchen -- especially below the counter. Prep before you cook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place). And just keep practicing; you will naturally get better and faster.
  • bobbiechen 9mo ago
    I'm a mise en place hater personally, since I make a lot of things that are essentially stir fries or stews where some ingredients need significantly more time. Sure, go for it on more complicated recipes, but it's really overkill for lots of daily cooking.
    • mattmaroon 9mo ago
      I hear ya there, it’s not necessarily time-optimal when you’re not multi tasking and one step takes much longer than others. I’ll often start my onions and then go get my mise on. But there’s something zen and satisfying about good mise.
• zcw100 9mo ago
  I've found the blue tape and a sharpie to be a game changer. It helps me keep my fridge tidy without having to go through everything and guess if it's still ok. I find I actually waste less food when I throw things out regularly because I know that if it's in there it's good to eat and it doesn't get lost among old leftovers that aren't any good anymore anyway.
  • abainbridge 9mo ago
    That wouldn't make me happy. If the sharpie on the tape said it was bad, I'd still look at it, sniff it and probably eat it. Certain foods scare me though. eg there's a common claim that boiled rice shouldn't be kept for more than a day and then re-heated. I follow this received wisdom even though it never seems bad and I don't know anyone who got ill from eating re-heated boiled rice. On the other hand, raw chicken does not scare me because I have an uncontrollable revulsion to it when it has actually gone bad. And of course, Camembert isn't worth eating until at least a fortnight after the expiry date.
    • jiehong 9mo ago
      Fried rice is traditionally made with cold leftover rice from the previous day. Yet, making just the right quantity each time is invaluable to avoid any waste!
    • zcw100 9mo ago
      It does't tell you if it's bad, it only tells you how old it is. You get to decide if you want to eat it. It makes the decision process easier and helps to select the older leftovers that are still good but pushing it on the age.
• unit149 9mo ago
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• jancsika 9mo ago
  I'd really like to vectorize-- prep once for, say, 8 or 16 contiguous shots at pan searing the salmon the correct way. There should be an app that matches home vectorization needs with busy restaurant schedules. So I would pay, say, $50 bucks to jump in the kitchen and get yelled at to properly produce either 16 acceptable salmon entrees or ruin 2, whichever comes first.
• Theaetetus 9mo ago
  I'm grateful for all the notes here. I seem to have been insufficiently clear on the subject of boiling water, so I've written a follow-up post: https://www.natemeyvis.com/on-boiling-water/ https://www.natemeyvis.com/on-boiling-water/
  • TRiG_Ireland 9mo ago
    Boiling water in the electric kettle (in a country with 240kV, at least) just makes sense, and I've always done it ... until I moved to a place with an induction stovetop cooker. Now I boil on the stovetop (with the lid on the pan, of course).
• tptacek 9mo ago
  * Deli cups. * Quarter hotel pans (the stackable kind). * Painter's tape and Sharpies. * Zojirushi water boiler. * Foot pedal sink.
  • vlod 9mo ago
    Whether you think that using plastic (deli) cups are a cause of all humanities health problems or not, you might want to use glass containers. They're reusable, microwavable (I believe that's a no-no for plastic, but who knows nowadays) and dishwasher safe.
    • tptacek 9mo ago
      There's a reason you're more likely to see a line cook drinking out of a deli than a glass container.
      • vlod 9mo ago
        Well I don't think residential kitchens are as chaotic as a commercial kitchen, so sure drinking out of a non breaking container is probably a good idea (glass breakage is a pita there). However most people (I assume on HN) are not line cooks and do not work in commercial kitchens. I drink out of glass (don't want plasticy taste) and use glass to store leftover food. Here's one: "There's a reason most line cooks drink out a deli rather than read NIH" [0] :) As previously mentioned, whether one thinks using glass is worth it is a personal preference. [0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11193405/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11193405/ [0] TLDR: Guidance Avoid plastic containers as much as possible. My ranking (and only if food-grade) of probability of leaching chemicals into the foods they contain...
        • tptacek 9mo ago
          I store leftovers in deli cups. I usually wash them afterwards. A rigid plastic deli has about as much plastic as a freezer bag, but by the time you've reused a deli once, you've crushed the freezer bag in efficiency, and the median reuse count of one of my delis is probably double-digits. Meanwhile, if I need to clean my fridge out fast, I can just check the entire deli in 2 seconds. Do that with a glass container. You do you, but if you buy prepared food, be aware that no part of the supply chain for that food is fastidious about plastic the way you are.
• fph 9mo ago
  From the article: boil water in two different containers then combine it. Also from the article: "please prioritize safety considerations, such as minimizing the chances of spilling boiling water [...] That stuff matters a lot more than small time savings." uhm...
  • lkbm 9mo ago
    If pouring boiling water from a kettle--a thing designed specifically for pouring water--into a pot significantly increases the risk of spilling boiling water, seems like your only option is to limit yourself to cold liquids.
    • fph 9mo ago
      It is hard not to increase the risk when the baseline is not pouring any boiling water at all.
• jeffbee 9mo ago
  Since the phrase "home ec" does not seem to appear in the comments yet I will just point out that at least for my generation, doing the dishes efficiently was taught in high schools. Minimizing movements in the kitchen was a subject of instruction.
• jmspring 9mo ago
  This sort of reminds me of those single powder or whatever meals they were awhile back - for those that need to eat but take no pleasure or dedicate no time. For me, cooking (prep and cleanup included) is about enjoying the process, understanding what I am making and taking time doing it. If I want quick, sure there are options around. Cooking for me is relaxation and time away not thinking about tech and the like.
  • whynotmaybe 9mo ago
    Soylent? Strangely based on the movie Soylent green
  • jacknews 9mo ago
    Think of it like getting AI to write your boilerplate and that annoying-to-use API, so you can focus on the architecture and the difficult bits.
• seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  Chinese cooking is really optimized, the recipes (well, for home cooked food) are fairly direct and involve simple prep steps that can be performed quickly. Even if I wasn’t married to a Chinese, I wouldn’t think of cooking anything else just due to the time savings alone.
  • jebarker 9mo ago
    The issue I find with Chinese cooking is that it often requires very high heat and so (probably due to bad technique on my part) I get a house full of smoke or at least very high VOCs. Any tips to avoid that?
    • jiehong 9mo ago
      Close the kitchen door, open the window and high ventilation!
    • jeffbee 9mo ago
      Use a gas wok burner out on the kitchen porch. These will get you closer to restaurant power levels anyway. They use what amounts to a broken off gas main with a foot pedal.
    • amdsn 9mo ago
      An appropriate oil (canola/peanut) and having everything that's going to go in the pan prepped before you even get the heat going are the main things to minimize smoke, but if you're cooking something that really calls for max heat you'll get smoke periodically as the oil returns to that temp unless your burner can't get the pan up to the smoke point of the oil. Prep is very important since adding ingredients absorbs a lot of heat so if you're cooking something that needs smoking hot oil you can immediately add ingredients in when the oil hits temp and that will absorb energy to bring the temp back down. It also helps you get it done asap. If you have to fumble around for stuff or prep ingredient 4 on the side while the pan is already in use for ingredient 1/2/3 it's very easy to loose track of things and end up with a pan that just sits there smoking. Also add the oil just before you start cooking, don't let it heat up with the pan. Practically speaking in a home kitchen you also don't have to cook with heat that high, even if you're using a wok. There are plenty of recipes that call for lower temps, and you can often even make things that do call for high temps on a lower one instead. If you're dedicating to cooking that way you could also look into improving your vent hood if that's an option in your housing setup.
• PunchyHamster 9mo ago
  Load stuff directly into dishwasher and as soon as you decide you don't need it. In general small cleaning tasks are great filler for any wait in dish-making I got a bunch of time-saving (or at least time-sync-effort-having) from just air-fryer option to run 2 programs at time (basically set different times and it will take care of starting them in such way they both finish at once). Put carbs like potatoes in one chamber, meat in other, set and start it, make some salad/tea/whatever else in mean time, 15 minutes and done. > Especially because getting the water boiling is so often a limiting factor, it's worth considering this sort of optimization. I probably spent extra hours per year cooking before I changed how I boil water. There are many common tasks like this in the kitchen; it's worth thinking carefully about them. Prepare stuff while it boils, like, you either boil stuff into stew in the water or boil some kind of pasta or other carb there, surely there is plenty of other parts of the dish to make in meantime?
• draw_down 9mo ago
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• enraged_camel 9mo ago
  Vacuum-sealable containers are pretty great.
• buescher 9mo ago
  Working on your knife skills will pay off more than any small organizational optimizations and it's fun. The top oven of a 30" double oven heats up almost as fast as a toaster oven, you don't have to bend over far to use it, and it takes up no counter space. I thought these were just for people who frequently cook huge meals for large gatherings but we moved into a house with one, used the top oven constantly, and it became a must-have when it was time to replace the range. I got a gigantic weston vacuum sealer for Christmas one year. Fortunately we have the counter space for it, and drawer space beneath it for the bags, in our pantry. In the amounts we cook it's taken a long time to break even on any cost savings but it's a quality of life game changer. Plus sous vide. In a world where less-than-super-premium American butchery has gone from mediocre to downright sloppy in my lifetime, it's very, very nice being able to break down big roasts and subprimals into chops and steaks and smaller roasts etc and trim them up nicely and freeze whatever we're not going to use immediately. I tie roasts before freezing them. Just buy the big box of sharpies for the kitchen. They walk off and dry out and get that weird thing that happens when they touch something oily. I mark things like super-duper-pasteurized dairy products with the date opened. I'm not michelin-star disciplined about using painter's tape for other containers. If I have a subprimal's worth of meat to go in the freezer, I use a label maker.
  • jeffbee 9mo ago
    > heats up almost as fast as a toaster oven OK now I am curious. How powerful is this drawer and how large? I just set my toaster oven to 450ºF and the thermostat clicked off in 18 seconds, at which point an infrared thermometer indicated the walls of the toaster were 355º. My full height oven would take at least 20 minutes to get there. I can see how cutting the volume in half would help but it feels like you'd need more insulation and/or more power to close that gap.
    • mschild 9mo ago
      I have a newer Bosch oven which comes with an optionally engable rapid heat function. It can usually reach 200C (400ish F) within 5ish minutes.
    • 9mo ago
• dustractor 9mo ago
  No discussion of kitchen optimization is complete without mentioning the Finnish Dish Drying Cabinet invented by Maiju Gebhard while working as the head of the Household Department of the Finnish Work Efficiency Institute (1944-1945)
• kqr 9mo ago
  Less known optimisation: have a slide rule handy[1]. They are amazing for working with proportions which happens all the time in the kitchen. Just today I needed 200 g of chocolate for a dessert. The bars were 160 g each and made into 21 rectangles. Set the slide rule to 200:160 and read out the value of x:21, which turns out to be 26.25 -- the number of rectangles needed. So convenient to be able to do that quickly and with messy hands. [1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/kitchen-slide-rule https://entropicthoughts.com/kitchen-slide-rule
  • quesera 9mo ago
    My method for that is: - I need 200g - Bars are 160g - So I need 1 bar + 40g - 40g is 25% of 160g (this one's easy, but precision is rarely critical -- and if you think it is, ask Siri) - So I need 1 bar + 1/4 bar
• calmbonsai 9mo ago
  Buy a modern pressure-cooker (e.g. Instant Pot). It cooks many items with zero loss in quality--often in less than 1/2 the time.
  • dgacmu 9mo ago
    I've really enjoyed using my newer instant pot as a sous vide lately. The fact that the lid closes on it is nice for saving energy, though it does take longer to get to temperature than my anova. But the anova is less convenient.
• mattmaroon 9mo ago
  The boiling water thing reduces waiting time but doubles active work time. It would be much more efficient to just work on other tasks while the water boils if there are any. This is also one thing I love about sous vide cooking. It’s slow in terms of total time elapsed but usually very efficient in terms of time spent actively cooking.
  • ramses0 9mo ago
    "Instant Hot" is a tap you can install that's like a mini-thermos/water heater to give you some amount of "instant hot" water. There's a decent caled a "pot watcher" (aka: boiling-rattler) that is a mechanical "hey, it's boiling" indicator. Anytime I'm cooking or thinking of cooking, I'll always throw water into the tea kettle (countertop boiler) and start it off, for exactly the reasons stated. I'm very thumbs up (and already follow) almost all of his advice, including the "use two boiling elements to get water boiling faster".
    • mattmaroon 9mo ago
      Why 2? Why not 8? How much time when cooking do you spend waiting for water to boil when not doing something else? For me it’s zero. And if for some reason it wasn’t zero that means I’m cooking leisurely and don’t much care about time.
      • Theaetetus 9mo ago
        Are you the poker Matt Maroon? If so, I've been enjoying your writing for a very long time. I definitely don't sit around doing nothing when I'm waiting for water to boil, but very often the water is still on the critical path (e.g., because I want the pasta to be done ASAP even if other things aren't done yet, or because it's on the critical path even if I can use all that time efficiently).
• deleted 9mo ago
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• walthamstow 9mo ago
  Embrace asynchronous cooking with a rice cooker. Maybe you can cook rice in a pot, maybe you can't, but you definitely can't do it while you're busy working or when you're out of the house. It cooks the rice and waits for when you're ready.
  • XorNot 9mo ago
    Seriously. Add a pressure cooker in here too: you can put the rice cooker on, then chop and prepare your pressure cooker items, put that on for 20 minutes and then it basically all finishes at the same time.
  • schemathings 9mo ago
    One of my lazy recipes is Sweet potato in rice cooker pot Filet of Tuna/Salmon/Chicken breast in steam basket Also some veg like cauliflower/brocolli Kale/Spinach in steam basket Add 1 cup water, press quick cook/steam. Season stuff after. Easy cleanup - nonstick pot.
  • MostlyStable 9mo ago
    In my opinion this is one of the under-rated advantages of sous vide. Most proteins have a very wide range of time in which they are appropriately cooked; often between 1 and 4 hours. Having the meat be ready to go, with at most a few minutes of searing time, at any point in a couple of hour window is really convenient. Our go-to "we didn't plan a meal tonight" is to pull an already-seasoned-in-the-sous-vide bag chicken breast out of the freezer, throw some rice in the rice cooker (I agree with the original point about rice cookers), and microwave some frozen vegetables. It's a pretty well balanced (if somewhat unexciting) meal that takes ~10-15 minutes of active work, is extremely flexible on timing, and has pretty minimal cleanup. It does take a few different levels of prep though: Packaging the chicken breasts (and having the freezer space to store them), and then realizing you are going to make this meal at least 2 hours, preferably 3, beforehand to start the sous vide
• TRiG_Ireland 9mo ago
  My own kitchen problems are all related to my ADHD. 1. I never even think about food till I'm already hungry, so any meal which takes a long time to cook is out. (I'm meal prepping a bit more often these days, which helps.) 2. I just _cannot_ cook two things and have them ready at the same time. So at least one of the things needs to be something that can hold once cooked. Pasta tends to work well.
  • gtowey 9mo ago
    Start putting it in your calendar -- meal times as well as "start cooking". I make enough for the family for have at least two meals. One-pot meals means less fussing with trying to get multiple dishes to be ready at the same time. I keep a Google doc of our dinner recipes. These are things that we know everyone likes, and usually I make tweaks to Internet recipes to either make them more to my taste, or easier to make. It also means I can split the effort -- my wife picks what we're having from our list and shops for the ingredients. Then I cook. If you have around 20 recipes you can just keep rotating and not get tired of them, and I like that I get to practice making the same recipes and make little changes to improve how I cook them each time. Basically dinner takes very little thought or effort right now. Which is great for the stage of my life I am in right now. It doesn't always have to be this structured but it's nice to have an easy fallback.
• schemathings 9mo ago
  You only need to remove as many dishes from the dishwasher as you intend to put in.
  • gitaarik 9mo ago
    So you mean you don't completely empty it and then put dirty dishes back inside among the clean ones?
• polishdude20 9mo ago
  If you've got a gas stove and need to boil water to cook with, boil it first in an electric kettle. It'll boil much faster.
• kasey_junk 9mo ago
  A smaller oven. Ovens in the US are sized for 1 meal a year, Thanksgiving. If you instead use the smallest oven you can, it will be more efficient to operate and cook more precisely. Also easier to clean. Unfortunately small ovens are frequently just geared at the cheaper market. So can cut corners on reliability. But these days that’s not uncommon.
  • tptacek 9mo ago
    I use my gas oven about twice a year, and everything else I do, I do in a convection toaster oven, which is the single most useful cooking appliance in my house; it's not even close.
    • kasey_junk 9mo ago
      I’m a weirdo I know, but when I designed our kitchen remodel I didn’t even put a traditional oven in (there’s the hook ups for it for property value purposes). We use a mix of a countertop convection and induction hot plates. More flexible for our small place, more control, more efficient and more capable other than for oven roasting a large whole turkey. Which no one should do.
      • tptacek 9mo ago
        We have a pretty nice BlueStar range/gas oven and it's striking how much better the temperature control is in the electic convection oven than in the gas oven; like, if you can get away with cooking something in a convection oven, it's going to yield a better product. I'd rather have a stack of two convection toaster ovens than a gas oven.
• ncrmro 9mo ago
  I’ve been working an a meal planning application that so far can order all your groceries after planning a meal. There is a basic task graph now to estimate time to finish and takes into account different euqipment like a food processor or pressure cooker. It’s at https://mezi.fyi https://mezi.fyi would love any feedback there is a demo on the landing page
• cyberrock 9mo ago
  By far the biggest boost to my efficiency is using the same stackable containers for prep and storage instead of just random bowls. Even if they don't have measurement marks, just using the same containers all the time lets me measure by sight for ingredients that don't need to be precise. It also allows saving space on counters and in sinks. Commercial cooks from fast food line cooks to Gordon Ramsay may be rolling their eyes at this basic fact right now, but most cooking shows and videos don't seem to show this strategy.
• nehal3m 9mo ago
  > If you are time-constrained and do a lot of kitchen work, though, it's worth paying attention to these optimizations. Absolutely. However, lately I've been going at humdrum daily stuff at a pace so slowly it's just a tad shy of ridiculous. Things like making coffee, walking the dogs, vacuuming, driving (not obstructing anyone, just a relaxed pace) and also cooking. I've found very little downside; if you relax while you're doing your dailies you don't need to rush through so you can plop down on the couch. I don't have children though, not sure how that factors in.
• cordonbleuey 9mo ago
  Speaking of kitchen optimizations - I’m building a voice assistant specifically for cooking that lets you ask contextual questions hands-free while cooking. ‘How much butter?’ ‘What’s next?’ etc. - instead of constantly needing to look at your phone/tablet with messy hands. In beta now if anyone wants to try it.
• hopingtomuch 9mo ago
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• dantle 9mo ago
  A dishwasher micro optimization: put the small forks/spoons face down in the basket, and the large ones face up. Helpful when unloading because these items are time consuming to visually distinguish, but we sort them. Works best if you can somehow convince your spouse to do it, too. :)