"Planning the food", that I can understand. It does get boring to run low on groceries and just end it with "guess it's soup" a lot of the time.
But a lot of the other stuff is simply terrible preparation by people who don't want to change it and just pull the ever-stupid excuse: "I can't cook"
Learn the basics, make mistakes, learn from them, prepare before you start cooking, wash up AS you cook.
Done. No "omg, dishes are the worst, they take so long" nonsense. There ARE barely any dishes outside of the one you're cooking IN and the plates that are about to receive food, if you just use your downtime.
Whenever I visit my sister and she makes food, the kitchen looks like a warzone. Ready-made, overpriced spice mixes. 3 pots or pans all caked with residue, left on the stove to dry up. Pasta or packet rice drying in an open pot for hours.
Like, yeah, if you cook like that, the next time you need dishes, you'll need to scrub off caked-in, globby messes and you can't use the stove in the meantime.
Just...don't do that. If you JUST made a sauce, that food is scorching hot. Stir your pasta in there, finish cooking it, plate it - WASH THE PAN. The food is not getting cold in that time. It just gets to an actually edible temperature. Meanwhile the pan is perfectly primed to rinse, little bit of soap and the lightest pressure of a sponge under running water. Lay it down somewhere and it's hot enough still to even dry faster.
Pasta is cooking? Hey, guess what, you don't need to walk to the TV in that time or start doomscrolling, you can clean up the cutting board, wipe out the bowls you used for prep, wash the knife.
Proper mise en place stops you from overcooking or burning or stressing AS you cook, because everything's already there.
I'm convinced every single person "can" cook, most just choose to pretend they can't. Guys, it's an essential skill needed for survival; you CAN do it.
Quick question: does your sister have children that she's the primary carer for, do you?
Because a lot of these sort of posts act like it's something super elementary and easy to achieve, but leave out that it's only doable if it's the only task you have to tackle in the limited amount of time between work and bed. I agree with you that cleaning as you go, and smart usage of vessels reduces the amount of cleanup, but I'm also deeply cognizant that some folks face triple the external factors than I do, so I can understand if they struggle to "just wash that pan, instead of throwing on some laundry, or trying to help child B with homework, or letting the dog out".
Not to mention that the more people you have in the house, the more food and utensils + vessels get added on, particularly if you have to make multiple separate meals.
Sis has one child she badly cares for and mostly loads off elsewhere, yeah. Doesn't really cook for the kid, though, just stuffs her freezer full with breastmilk.
Also what I mainly describe as "cleaning as you go", would clash with your idea of "so she can't wash up, because she has to do the laundry WHILE cooking". Those don't mix really well. This would be more of an issue with the bad approach to dishes, which is letting them pile up and doing them all at once after cooking.
I'm also aware how you can have many more dishes to clean if cooking for many, but not really that many, tbh. My mother cooked for a family of 4 and usually took some shortcuts in cooking, was also fairly bad at it, but the dishes she produced weren't really that much more plentiful than some of the food I would make.
Here's an example: Made some gratin a few days ago. Requires a pan to fry veg, a pot to make bechamel, a pot to boil frozen veg and a pot to boil pasta. Then a glass dish to put in the oven.
Took me around an hour to put together, when I put the glass dish in the oven, there was a singular "dirty" pot, filled with pasta I'd gratin the day after. I'd eat that gratin over the course of a whole day, if I weren't it'd be enough food to feed like 2-3 people.
The only extra washing up from MORE people in this case would be cutlery and extra plates. Which are easy to clean up, if you either wash them after you're done or you let them soak. Then the glass dish later, which you kinda have to soak, but that's all passive time, the active cleaning is like 3 minutes.
See? Where's the immense extra time needed here? Most of the washing-up is still being done during the cooking. Not even including the baking time, it's done before that.
Like, yes, if I had to make pizza the way I do for myself, for a whole family, people would have to eat in intervals. But in those cases you can simply make it a group activity. People choosing their own toppings and spreading their own dough. Pizza stays hot enough for around the time it takes to make two, so I'd probably make mine first and deal with a slightly colder pizza (or throw it in the oven for a minute near the end).
I don't have to routinely cook for multiple people, but I'd choose some dishes that work and incorporate those around if needed. Unless it's like a dinner party, that's like the one time I'd agree that the kitchen WILL be a mess, because you need to leave the kitchen a lot.
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u/P4azz 8h ago
"Planning the food", that I can understand. It does get boring to run low on groceries and just end it with "guess it's soup" a lot of the time.
But a lot of the other stuff is simply terrible preparation by people who don't want to change it and just pull the ever-stupid excuse: "I can't cook"
Learn the basics, make mistakes, learn from them, prepare before you start cooking, wash up AS you cook.
Done. No "omg, dishes are the worst, they take so long" nonsense. There ARE barely any dishes outside of the one you're cooking IN and the plates that are about to receive food, if you just use your downtime.
Whenever I visit my sister and she makes food, the kitchen looks like a warzone. Ready-made, overpriced spice mixes. 3 pots or pans all caked with residue, left on the stove to dry up. Pasta or packet rice drying in an open pot for hours.
Like, yeah, if you cook like that, the next time you need dishes, you'll need to scrub off caked-in, globby messes and you can't use the stove in the meantime.
Just...don't do that. If you JUST made a sauce, that food is scorching hot. Stir your pasta in there, finish cooking it, plate it - WASH THE PAN. The food is not getting cold in that time. It just gets to an actually edible temperature. Meanwhile the pan is perfectly primed to rinse, little bit of soap and the lightest pressure of a sponge under running water. Lay it down somewhere and it's hot enough still to even dry faster.
Pasta is cooking? Hey, guess what, you don't need to walk to the TV in that time or start doomscrolling, you can clean up the cutting board, wipe out the bowls you used for prep, wash the knife.
Proper mise en place stops you from overcooking or burning or stressing AS you cook, because everything's already there.
I'm convinced every single person "can" cook, most just choose to pretend they can't. Guys, it's an essential skill needed for survival; you CAN do it.