As a non-cook myself, I can fry some eggs in 3 minutes or so, and a steak a bit longer. Sometimes I'll dump a bowl of frozen veggies into a bowl, put a pat of butter on top, microwave for a couple minutes, and it's ready to eat. A can of beans takes a couple minutes.
The idea that to eat decent food requires much prep time in the kitchen isn't true.
> Not everybody has 5 hours a day or a stay-at-home wife to cook their Whole Foods organic produce into a masterpiece of nutrition.
I'm guessing from this that you've never cooked in your life?
(Hint: Pretty much nobody cooks five hours a day unless it is their job. I mostly cook for myself, and I don't think I've ever really spent more than 30 minutes of active work on it).
> Maybe I’m just inefficient at cooking but I discovered quite quickly that cooking complex meals at home multiple times per week is actually not something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what felt like an inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking, eating, and extensive cleanup.
The way to be efficient is to cook in bulk so you have leftovers. I typically cook in bulk every Sunday, freeze six portions, and remove a portion from each the six prior weeks from the freezer.
> Who is waiting while food cooks? When I cook I am attending to the food the entire time. Perhaps if you are a heavy oven user you get time to do other things, but otherwise, no.
Long long ago I had a neighbour who cooked ONE day per month and froze everything. He printed out a menu card for himself with 3 and 4 course meals. He used a table cloth with the fine silver utensils and fancy plates. He would sit himself down, look at the menu, pick something then move the food from the freezer to the microwave. It looked like a high end restaurant. His argument was that he hated cooking and didn't want to spend any time on it.
The house had a shared kitchen. The one day he cooked was hilarious. He cooked for 40-50 people (inc guests), made various kinds of soup, all kinds of meat, pastas, curries, deserts etc
He one time pondered buying a rice cooker to make better rice but decided it was to much like cooking.
The food went in plastic bags in containers, when frozen he would pull it out of the container to save space and avoid having to wash the containers.
I also know people who eat together. They have no further relationship. They take turns cooking. Small groups like 3 or 4 but also larger ones like 6 or 8 people. You do need space for that ofc.
If you really attend to the food for an hour it is probably a more nutritious and more sophisticated meal than the fast food? How much money are you saving in that hour?
Parenting is just hard work. I'm afraid it includes teaching how to cook.
> I just don't get why people eat out so often, unless they are incredibly short of time - and in that case maybe they just don't manage their time correctly.
Why are you making value judgements on people's time management?
Personally, I don't understand how anyone who makes over $20/hour ever cooks.
I can buy a great meal for $20. Given my hourly rate of $100/hour, I'd have to be able to prepare an equivalently good meal in just 12 minutes. That doesn't seem likely at all—especially because this analysis doesn't include the cost of ingredients.
Have you considered that many people just don't enjoy cooking? I find your post incredibly laden with value judgements. Why can't you just accept that many people don't share your priorities?
>It takes 10 minutes for a chef to make my meal, and 25 minutes for someone to come to the restaurant, pick it up, and drive it to my house.
And in that 25 minutes, the food has gotten cold and its chemistry has changed too. You could reheat it in the microwave, but now it'll just taste like reheated leftovers.
Because it doesn't. Making pasta takes the same amount of time either way.
You know just as well as I do that this is silly, we both exist in the real world and know how long things take, and you know the point I'm trying to make.
Realistically people don't do these things because it's not habit, or because their workplace has no cooking facilites, not because of some epsilon seconds longer on meal prep or whatever.
> It’s not merely a matter of expense; when you consider the value of your friend’s time, plus the amortized cost of cookware, appliances, furniture, and housing—the home meal could be more expensive than the restaurant meal.
No it couldn't, this is complete bullshit. The amortization from a one time on something that you use every day for many years use is nothing.
This person sounds like he never actually cooks. That's all I'm saying.
> If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket.
If you ignore time costs, sure; pre-measured ingredients in the quantity necessary for the recipe provided is a huge time saver.
Yes, it creates waste, but it's not without utility.
Not really, if you consider the time and effort needed to prepare a meal at home. Starting from shopping at a kitchen market, transporting the goods to home, cutting, prepping, the cooking and finally cleaning up afterwards...
Unless you have several hours of free time each day, preparing ones own meal is not something everyone looks forward to...
>I've been cooking for 30 years, I've made a living out of it, and no it's not that simple. You talk like someone who has never cooked anything outside of a microwave.
Okay come on here, you know I did not post this to attack cooking as a profession. I have no doubt that you can make a tastier dish then I can.
My point was only that the basics of cooking is incredibly easy. One pot meals for example are exactly that, dump things in a pot and cook them. Even screwing up the order in something like Chili will still give you an eatable, tasty meal.
>You talk like someone who has never cooked anything outside of a microwave.
I have, and generally they act like it's a hard undertaking, so I give them easy recipes. Chili, Bratwurst, Curry, these are all meals that can be made in a limited number of dishes on the cheap. Serve with rice, and you can drastically cut your food cost.
EDIT: Honestly, I thought you were saying I hadn't talked to people who haven't cooked outside a microwave. I didn't realize you were actually attacking me. I've cooked quite a bit outside of a microwave, thank you.
> If you are trying to optimize for price, buying pre-made meals is so much more expensive than learning to cook some basic meals and buying the ingredients.
Depends how much you make. It takes me less than 15 minutes billable minutes to earn a healthy takeout lunch. It would definitely take longer than 15 minutes to cook/clean/buy groceries not to mention I enjoy my job a lot more than food preparation.
I love cooking occasionally. For example, I will spend a week trying to perfect a dish I just learned. I do it over and over everyday, trying different ways and failing until I make it great.
But for most of the time, I'd rather not have to do it.
>Just be aware that it's rather expensive in the long run.
True. But if your time is valuable, it's much more expensive to have to spend all that time in the kitchen.
> Even if you value your labor/time to cook to be worth of zero dollars
I understand what you're saying, but still cringed at that statement. Eating well and, by extension, cooking is hardly something I would value at $0/hour and I find it mildly insulting that someone would devalue the time I dedicate to preparing meals.
If you don't like cooking and would rather dedicate some of your income to having someone else do it for you, please frame it in that way. It recognizes it is your own decision and comes off as less judgmental of others.
> Also, cooking at home doesn’t really make sense from an economic standpoint when you think about it.[1] Like everything else, cooking has economies of scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook for many families at once.
Cheaper for the restaurant, yes. In don't see why it's cheaper for me if you add the restaurant's margin to the price.
Not even talking about taxes, labor, equipment, housing and food safety costs the restaurant has (and will pass on to me) that I don't have when I cook myself.
(The quality control I have is another point, though not a purely economic one)
>> I'd argue that one area of invention that has continued is essentially outsourcing home tasks in areas like food prep rather than creating new appliances to do them in the house.
Actually if you do it right, it can take around 2-2.5 hours each week to freeze meals for the whole week
On the other hand, while there are some tasty ,high quality frozen foods(like the french chain Picard) , they're more expensive , so people still make their own.
>Strange, I've found doing meal prep one day a week that you partition into fixed quantities for each day to be way easier than making a meal every day
I can't stand eating the same thing multiple days a week. Are you preparing multiple different meals for each day, one day a week?
Not to mention that it's never going to be as nice as a freshly-cooked meal anyway.
> The food is very good, but the instructions are written by someone who (a) seems to have a gourmet kitchen at their disposal and (b) doesn't do dishes after
I got exactly the reverse impression; the recipes go out of their way to minimize the number of pieces of cookware required (both per recipe, by reuse, and across recipes), which both caters to those without a well-studied kitchen and minimizes the work of dishes.
They are obsessive about mis en place, which can use a few more prep bowls than strictly necessary, but prep bowls are easy cleanup, pots and pans are the time consuming items. (OTOH, mis en place is pretty much the secret key to efficient meal preparation, especially with multiple components, that many home cooks overlook. It's better to be slightly overboard with it than the alternative.)
So the recipe magically chooses itself?
So the food magically appears in your fridge?
So the dishes magically wash themselves afterwards?
So the left-over ingredients magically use themselves up?
I really hate when people downplay the time cost involved in food preparation by focussing on only one step of the procedure.
reply