Improving Your Speed in the Kitchen

[s'kat]

I made a new recipe last night (Bittman's Chicken Thighs with Tomatoes and Olives). He suggested it would take about 45 minutes to complete the recipe. It was an hour and twenty minutes before I had dinner on the table.

Still being a relative newbie to the cooking game (maybe 3-4 years of actively doing so), it seems to take me such a long time to make a meal. My husband can walk into a kitchen, chop his veg, prepare the meats, throw everything together, and have the table set, wine poured, and dinner coming out in just over 30 minutes.

I read the recipes thoroughly before I begin. While I'm doing my afternoon run, I plot out the order in which I"m going to accomplish the meal's tasks. When I get home, I lay out the ingredients in the order in which they'll be used. To no avail. It still takes for-effin'-ever to do it all.

How does one get faster in the kitchen?

[Cusina]

Good Question! I've had this happen to me an awful lot too.

I think the answer might be practice. I cook at least 2 meals daily for my family and finally, after about 10 years, I feel like I might be getting a little faster. I now can look at a recipe or a bunch of ingredients that I want to become a meal and estimate pretty accurately for myself how long it will take.

I'll also suggest you take in the EGCI knife skills course, if you haven't already. That helped me cut my prep time (pun intended of course, ) by quite a bit. Plus I cry a whole lot less over the onions.

Of course, I spend all that time I save on prep. here reading this addictive board, so I think it might be a wash.

Knife Skills Link

Edited June 10, 2004 by Cusina (log)

[HungryChris]

Have you ever watched someone in food service who has been doing it for a long time. They are like poetry in motion. Things have their place and get returned to that place almost unconsciously. There is very little wasted motion and a clear sense of priority. They are an absolute pleasure to watch. Contrast that with someone who is new to the job. This becomes especially apparent if you are waiting in line for something. That's just the way it is. Some people are adept at picking up the skills quickly and some take longer. Knife skill is one of the big indicators to me. The way someone holds and handles a knife, how comfortable they are with it, how much effort goes into it's use tells a lot. The bottom line is practice and experience. Don't be discouraged!

Cheers,

HC

[Malawry]

I have a life policy of always behaving with a sense of urgency when I enter the kitchen. It's a hard one to engender, but it's important. I'm still slow compared to most professional cooks, but I'm catching up.

Here are some things I do to increase my speed:

Efficiency is key. Your mental planning is a big help. I'm always thinking of what I can do while other things are working, and try hard to maximize my time.

I clean as I work as much as possible. By the time I serve dinner, I like to have nothing left to wash but the dishes on the table and the pot dinner just came out of.

Develop good knife skills. Push yourself to cut faster and more precisely. If you use proper techniques and hustle yourself you'll get faster in no time.

If you gather all your ingredients, prep them all, then lay them out in order, IMO you're wasting a lot of your time. Yes, you do need to be sure you have everything, but you should be able to prep as you're cooking too. If you're standing over the pot stirring and waiting until the onions are done enough to add the chicken, you're wasting time. You should be able to cut the chicken while the onions are going. Onions will cook just fine without you standing over them.

For that matter, most people nudge their food around the pan far more often than necessary. And if you can do the pan-flipping thing you will spend even less time over the stove, you won't have to wash as many spatulas and spoons, and you'll impress your family and friends to boot.

[bbq4meanytime]

Improve speed and ability to multitask

[Big Bunny]

Malawry sums it up pretty well. It is important to know when to multi-task and when to "have the mice in place". A stir-fry is completely unlike a soup, for example.

Cleaning as you go is BIG. As Malawry says, the goal is to have no "dirty" dishes except what is on the table. With practice, this is easy - and very rewarding. The paradox is that the "extra" work of cleaning dishes as you go seems to speed the cooking process, not slow it down. It is exhilarating to cook in a clean kitchen. Keeping it that way CONSTANTLY (if possible) is definitely worth the effort.

On the other hand, I am not "quick like a bunny." Fast for me is relative, and I would never try to pass myself off as a pro. If your fastest is not as fast as some one else, don't worry about it.

Find your optimum style - use it consistently - and you will develop speed enough.

BB

[Suzanne F]

1. Practice. The more you do it, the faster you get. And the better you'll understand what you're doing, so that you can multitask (as Malawry says).

2. Fearlessness. The less you worry, the faster you do it.

3. Abandonment of the ideal of perfection. See #2 above. The less you want to do things "perfectly," the better -- and faster -- you'll do them.

3. Abandonment of the idea that the recipe writer is God. Hey, you're talking about Bittman here. But seriously, very few time estimates are accurate in the real world. Don't judge yourself by what the author says. The author is not you.

4. Remembering that most likely, no one you're feeding knows how the recipe/meal is "supposed" to look and taste. (See also #2.)

This is not to advocate hasty, slapdash work; rather, to remind you that cooking and putting a meal together is a pleasure, not work.

[mongo_jones]

i actually like to cook slowly, langurously. the key is to know your rhythms and plan meals accordingly. i always get dinner on the table exactly when i say i will--which is more than i can say for my wife (and it is a good thing she doesn't read egullet).

[NulloModo]

It always takes me quite a bit longer to cook recipes, but then again, I never even try to rush. I find cooking to be relaxing and do it for the enjoyment of the act itself as much as the finished product, so, rushing or optimizing for time would make it seem too much like work IMO.

[Carlovski]

And don't forgot RECIPES LIE!

The number of recipes I have seen which call for caramelizing onions, or reducing things down to a quarter, and yet still claim 20 minutes cooking time. Grrrr

[chickenlady]

Another thing... Don't those time estimates assume that you're starting with the ingredients all prepped as called for? For instance, if the ingredients list calls for 2 cups of peeled, seeded & chopped (fresh) tomatoes the time estimate assumes you've already done that in advance, not that you're starting with with whole tomatoes that still need all that prep. I always take longer than the recipe says, but I figure it's because of all the prep they don't account for. I've gotten pretty good at estimating how long it will actually take for me and can get out multiple dishes at the same time, but it's taken a lot of practice to get to this point.

As Malawry said, read ahead and find out which ingredients need to be prepped in advance and which can be done as you go along. Or if you're making multiple dishes how you can overlap the prep and cooking.

[FatTony]

Great thread!

My wife is always complaining how long it takes me to have dinner on the table, so maybe I am not the best one to give advice.

I find that when I make a dish regularly, I get faster at it. This then makes me want to make the dish more often and becomes self-fulfilling. A repertoire of things you know you can throw together comfortably and quickly is useful.

Some cookbooks are good for quick recipes that don't feel compromised in taste: Donna Hay and Nigel Slater are two of my favorites. Bittman's Minimalist Cooks At Home has numerous quick and delicious ideas too, more obviously so than HTCE .

Of course this is a bit of a cop-out: ideally you would be gliding around the kitchen, multitasking and managing your mise like a pro no matter what you're cooking. Just an idea while you get those knife skills up to par!

[fifi]

"have the mice in place"

Yeah... What they said.

Now, what I say. First, a disclaimer. I live alone so I don't have to get home from work and get dinner on the table any more. But, when I did, I didn't try to get into anything too complicated. I tended to use my leftover strategies on those nights (leftover chicken or other meat in a salad, Thai curry, pasta sauce, stuff out of the freezer for instance) and saved my "real cooking" for weekends and days off. I really HATE being rushed so I just avoided the whole situation. Yes, I can do it if I have to, but that is after many years of practice and I don't like it so I don't do it and I am probably not as good at it as I used to be. (whew)

I save recipe trials and development for when I can work at my own comfortable pace and enjoy the experience. If I am doing a recipe that I might do again, I make mental notes as to how long it takes. One of my biggest personal challenges is getting multiple dishes for dinner guests to come off at the optimum time.

Clean-as-you-go is the greatest lesson I ever learned. It is a great time saver in the long run and I revel in a neat and well ordered kitchen.

[s'kat]

Great advice, everyone!

My Dad actually tried to instill the clean-as-you-go rule years ago, but it didn't stick. It's something I've been trying to improve upon lately, as the kitchen tends to look like a hurricane just swept through by the time I've finished. My husband says he's never seen anyone destroy a kitchen the way that I can. I'm thinking it's not really a compliment, either.

Knife skills would be a great place to begin working on improvements. The only thing that I can do reasonably well and quickly is the onion-dicing trick. Also, all of our recently sharp new Global knives seem to have gone rather dull, so it might not hurt to take them some place and get a good edge put back on. I'll look at the course to see how to keep it there.

Multi-tasking is another impediment, but it sounds like that's just part of getting used to the flow of the kitchen. In my little segmented, Virgoan-world view, it hadn't occured to me to prep the chicken while the onions were going. Good point.

Tonight is grilled pizza night, a team effort that will definately get us at the table in an hour. Familiarity indeed breeds comfortable ease.

"mice in place." Sounds like newest tagline.

[birder53]

The suggestion to improve one's knife skills is great. I did take the eg knife course and it did reduce my onion cutting woes. However, I still can't keep my fingers tucked back away from the blade, which keeps the nails on my left hand shorter than those on my right. I need to go through that course again and then practice, practice, practice!

My husband has the same complaint about my cooking - I take too long. I'd be very embarrassed to let anyone watch me wield a knife - it is painfully slow and inefficient. It adds lots of extra time to my cooking Good luck s'kat! I know what you're going through!

[Mottmott]

Many meals can be made ahead, at least in part. When I'm cooking anything more complex than a steak and salad kind of meal, I find it is often helpful to stage out parts of it the day or days before. You sound like a more organized person than I am, so I'm sure in time you'll find your own rhythm.

For example, pissaladiere is one of my favorites. Well, when I'm hungry - to make the dough, caramelize the onions, prep the salted anchovies, cut up the olives all at the same time is too annoying to deal with even if I have the time. So I keep dough on hand in the freezer, caramelized onions which I do in large batches and also freeze (flat ziplocks), and every now and then I clean up a batch of salted anchovies that I store in oil. Making a delicious fresh out of the oven pissaladiere only takes 35 minutes that way, including baking. Indeed the whole thing could be made the night before and stored in the fridge and the rest of the meal (salad, dessert, etc.) can be pulled together while it bakes.

The same system will work with many dishes. Making a chicken? plan more than one meal around it, roasting 2 at the same time if you have family. Also, think about making stews or soups on weekends which will spend most of their time simmering while you do other things. Eat some of it, freeze some of it in flat ziplocks that will defrost quickly and you can have quick weeknight meals.

Omelets and frittatas are also meals that will be quick middle of the week meals. (check the eGCI courses on eggs) Check out Italian veggie dishes meant for antipastos (roast peppers, for ex) that often are better when made a day ahead. Similarly, there are many pasta sauces that can be made in the time it takes to make the pasta. (eGCI course on that, too)

Also, some of your slowness MAY come from your equipment, including less than sharp knives. Do you have the magic microplaner for garlic, ginger, nutmeg, cheese, chocolate, citrus zests, etc? a really good veggie peeler? light tongs (I like the flimsy light ones best) that can do everything from turning a steak to hauling spaghetti from the pot? a large convenient wooden cutting board? heavy bottom pots/pans that don't need hovering over? If you have a processor do you use it when slicing a LOT of onions or cucumbers, etc.? (The small processor is great for many things). Or a mandoline? (For 1 or 2 I just use the knife, but when caramelizing 8 lb of onions or potatoes, it's a time saver). Many of these are not expensive and the expensive items can often be found used.

[Cusina]

Boy I need to work on that clean as you go thing. Would help me tremendously. My problem is that the dishwasher seems to be in constant operation, so I have no place to put those prep. dishes. I'm getting better about emptying it regularly, but sometimes I feel like I spend my days wearing out the spot in front of the sink. Oy.

One more thing that I like to do to speed things up is to menu plan in advance. Sometimes it's fun to be spontaneous, but when I have a deadline (like two really hungry children at my heels asking for dinner) I like to have the entire meal planned out ahead of time and thought through how things will come together. Otherwise I find that I need to grow a thrid hand, which hasn't happened yet.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Wonderful thread. While recipes don't "lie", remember the enormous difference between "2 tablespoons basil chiffonade" and "run into the garden and pick a handful of basil, run back into the house, wash, dry and ribbon it". If the recipe relies on pre-prepped or processed ingredients, and you don't, dinner creation will take considerably more time than the book/magazine/recipe indicate. And your results may be vastly better for it! Just remember to consider the prep time for all of the ingredients.

And, of course, clean as you go will never let you down. I got my lesson from a relative who could use up all of the pots, pans and dishes in her house to make a cup of tea. Even at age 10 I realized that something was seriously wrong.

[Dana]

If someone complains that you're too slow, tell them to get their rear end into the kitchen and help out!!! Next time, they'll keep their mouth shut and appreciate you!!!

[fresco]

A lot of great suggestions here. My own experience is that necessity tends to make a cook efficient and there is a lot to be said for the ability to get a good meal on the table quickly.

But it is a great luxury to be able to spend all day preparing dinner.

[bleudauvergne]

Yes this is a wonderful thread and I agree with much of what’s been already said.

For saving time, an organized kitchen is most important in my opinion - knowing where every tool is, and having everything clean, or at least ready to use again. A bowl which has been used to hold something does not need soap and water scrubbing, a rinse and a wipe with a clean towel and it’s ready to use again). When we moved to a new place and had to re-organize the kitchen, I realized just how used to knowing exactly where each and every implement was, and having everything within easy reach. It makes my kitchen look weird, with things hanging everywhere, but it saves a lot of time. I hate losing time because I have to look for something, wash something, or fish through a drawer.

Repetition make things faster - As time goes on, and you have done certain successful recipes a number of times, you'll already know what goes into them, you'll be able to multitask more efficiently, and they will be very fast to put together, even if they took a long time to do when you first began. In my experience once you've done something around 6 times, you know the recipe, you know what you can fit in between tasks to get other dishes prepared and finished at the same time, you can easily halve the time you originally took. I rarely prepare things from a recipe during the week that I've never done. If you begin the evening with something you've never prepared by carefully reading the recipe, you should consider reading the recipe several days in advance, trying it on the weekend, etc.

Prep is easier and faster if you are well equipped - a good sharp knife saves a lot of time. When I am in a hurry or not in the mood, I use the mandolin, and it speeds things up considerably. (I also use the mandolin when I have to splice plenty of onions, because I am particularly sensitive to the oils – everything comes to a stop). Plentiful small cutting boards of various shapes and sizes are necessary for me since I often cook several things at once and ease of action (chop and dump) translates to saved time.

I agree with the others about hovering over food steps – often it’s not necessary, and more often than not, it can also contribute to a step which has not been fully completed, because if impatience. Especially when browning meats.

Edited June 11, 2004 by bleudauvergne (log)

[MobyP]

I'm pretty good about cleaning as I go - up to a point. On those big meals I hit the wall where there's too much to do - sauces to finish, garnishes to warm through, etc - and stuff starts piling up. How do I get better at this? It's always the last 10-15 minutes that get me.

[Anna N]

"Clean as you go" was a revelation to me, too. It happened many years ago when I watched a friend prepare dinner and by the time we were called to the table there was no evidence that her kitchen had ever been used! BUT, I can get carried away with it. In my zeal to emulate her I often find that the very utensil, bowl, pan I need is buried in a sink full of soapy water!

I also agree and now practise the "if it ain't dirty don't wash it" philosophy and wipe out bowls etc. that have been used to hold dry or clean ingredients.

But even more importantly, for me at least, is to start with pristine counters, an empty dishwasher and empty sinks and to make sure there is room to plate.

What I have learned here and what helps enormously in those last frantic minutes is that most proteins need a rest and that is the time to make a quick sauce or a garnish.

I don't care much about being super speedy. What matters more is being relaxed and confident when it's time to serve.

[MobyP]

My whole process hass changed with this new kitchen - it's about half the size of anywhere else I've been - and it means I need to be much more efficient with space, and organized as I go along.

Empty dishwasher, clean surfaces before you start. A must. Otherwise you'll spend the whole evening catching up. But I still can't figure out how I lose it towards the end. When all of the pans are out of the oven, and you're transfering everything to serving bowls or plating it directly etc. - you want to get it to the table before it gets cold. How do you find time to wash?

[Suzanne F]

When all of the pans are out of the oven, and you're transfering everything to serving bowls or plating it directly etc. - you want to get it to the table before it gets cold. How do you find time to wash?

Well, there ARE limits to clean-as-you-go. At the very least, I do try to get the empty pots and pans into the sink, to fill them with water so the food residue doesn't glue itself on. But, then, I've got an warming tray on the pass between the kitchen and dining area. The filled plates/bowls go on the tray to hold until I get the pots into the sink.

I can recommend few kitchen "toys" more than a warming tray: for heating the plates, and for holding the food, it is fabulous. And it's great for melting butter and chocolate (I've never gotten the hang of that nuker thing). If you can find one by Salton, that's the best. The one I'm using now is at least 15 years old; other, newer ones from Maxim self-destructed in much less time.