In another thread, some posters described what impressed me as pretty elaborate procedures for making a sandwich. Which got me wondering how much time people spend preparing and eating an average meal. By “average meal” I mean whatever you consider your main meal on a weekday.
Me, I doubt I spend more than 15 minutes prepping and tending just about any meal. And that is likely a very generous estimate. Something like rice and beans, or grilled meat and veggies might be as little as 5 minutes.
Cooking time? Well, salmon might take up to 25 minutes on the grill, but that is about the longest for anything I cook to go from prep to table. Many meals are ready in no more than 15-20 minutes.
I doubt my wife and I are sitting at the table for longer than 10 minutes. Pretty much put it on the table, eat, then clean up. If we are going to spend such little time eating, I don’t care to put a great deal ore time cooking.
Both of us - but especially me - view food primarily as fuel. So we are happy with simple foods, so long as they are tasty and nutritious.
Well, today for lunch I made a pizza using a pre-made crust, marinara out of a jar, kalamata olives, two kinds of cheese, mushrooms, chopped raw onion, and some broccoli florets I’d steamed for another meal. Ten minute prep, popped in the oven, and while that was baking I made a massaged kale salad with dried cranberries, avocado, and croutons. Twenty minutes at most.
I think that’s about average. Casseroles and stews take longer although that’s mostly cooking not prep. Breakfast (invariably raw oats, nuts, fruit, and yogurt) is five minutes to prep, if that.
Not usually all that long, unless it’s something that needs to braise or simmer for a couple of hours, like a green chili stew. I made cornmeal pancakes this morning, which takes a bit of time because I let the cornmeal soak in hot water for ten minutes. It also makes a mess of the kitchen with bowls, measuring cups, etc.
All over the map. Anywhere from “take the ready-to-eat food out of fridge, put on table” (~ 15 seconds) to “on the first day, pressure-cook the whole chicken; let cool; strip all the meat off the bones; pour broth through a sieve and store separately; meanwhile roast the pimiento peppers in the broiler until the skin blackens and bubbles up; peel the skins off…” (2 full 50-6 hour days of cooking + occasional additional partial prep day).
I normally cook dinner with Wheel of Fortune on in the background and eat while watching Jeopardy. If I’m just heating a can of soup or some leftovers, the total time spent ranges from 40 to 45 minutes. If I’m making something like a cheeseburger and French fries, then a whole hour. That includes gathering and assembling all the required elements, heating the pot and pan, pouring my beverages, moving everything to the table, and putting the dirty utensils into the sink.
Yeah, that makes a HUGE difference. For me anywhere from 5 minutes to a day+ if you include marinate time . I really don’t do anything that elaborate, but I do a lot of stews and slow roasts that take several hours to cook and maybe 30-45 minutes to prep because I tend to move very slowly and methodically with prep. However on the other side of the equation, I also eat a fair bit of takeout so it is not like I do this every single day.
But I love food and don’t really conceptually think of it as fuel (even though it is).
It consistently takes approximately 30 minutes more than I think it will. I’m genuinely awed by those of you who can prepare an actual complete meal in under half an hour. It takes me that long just to prep the vegetables, much less cook anything. I suppose the average time is around an hour unless it’s something that has to simmer or bake for an extended period of time. This is something I’m always trying to improve, but anything more complicated than a fried egg sandwich or a grilled cheese invariably takes an hour.
When I say “leftovers,” I usually mean things I cook in bulk that will provide anywhere from four to eight servings. These can be anything from Tex-Mex pie to Swedish meatballs, from Spanish rice to Chicken paprikás, and everything else in between. These can take an hour or more to prepare, and I make them maybe once every six weeks.
I make great pizza from scratch that lasts a couple of days, but it takes at least an hour for the dough to rise and 25–30 minutes for the pie to bake.
Making things like chili, soup, stews, and spaghetti sauce from scratch takes up an entire afternoon. I can only do this during the winter because I never have enough room in my fridge to keep everything. It all goes into storage bins outside my back door, where it’s nice and cold.
Breakfast I made a Spanish tortilla (something like a potato omelette) probably 45 minutes from start to finish. We also had some fresh berries and peaches.
Lunch was swordfish curry with homemade parathas and curried cauliflower and carrots. Probably close to 90 minutes beginning to end.
Dinner will be teriyaki chicken, carrots and mushrooms with jasmine rice. Not counting the hour of marinating and the rice cooker doing its thing, about 20 minutes of active work (chopping meat and veg, rinsing rice, stir frying).
On weekdays when I am working from home, lunch is usually something left over or something quickly sautéed. Dinner usually involves my wife doing the prep ahead of time.
But breakfasts even on weekdays usually involve fresh baked bread or crepes or waffles or parathas or scallion pancakes. I’m sometimes up at 5:30 to make it happen. I put the ingredients into the bread maker the night before so that the first rise is done when I awake.
Yeah, I think the divide comes down to people who really enjoy cooking and people who would just as soon have someone else do it, but there isn’t anyone else. I’m certainly in category 2. I’m a pretty good cook because I started when I was a kid, the way most girls did in those days, and by now I’ve had many decades of practice. But it’s not something I particularly want to do. Beats vacuuming, I guess.
Most people enjoy eating and don’t think of it as merely “fuel”.
I like variety, so I had pretty much decided to start cooking by the time I was eight, in light of my mother’s limited culinary skills. I’d never get what I wanted if I didn’t make it myself.
If I have the time to really cook I will spend the time. I enjoy cooking and eating and my wife is an audience I aim to please. Woke up early today to get a brisket smoking, an adventure in our pouring rain …
And some nights we both get home late and speed is the goal. But even then there’s some time involved: defrosting a pound package of ground bison to grilled cheeseburgers, with baked potatoes (partly microwaved for speed) and a quick veggie and/or a packaged salad (partial to “sweet kale”), which is probably as fast as it gets other than reheating something previously made, still takes about half an hour. Plus time to eat, talk, and clean up. Lots of stews and soups, wintertime favorites, are fairly little active cook time, but even with an instant pot it’s a small wait until they are served.
Food is definitely not just fuel in my household. It’s not simply about the pleasure of eating, though that’s part of it. In our family, meal time is sacred; we cook and eat dinner together, and I’m always looking for something new to teach my kids, about prep cleanliness and safety or the use of a specialized tool or the handling of a new ingredient. We also treat food as a cultural window, preparing dishes from all over the world and discussing what they teach us (e.g. the sweet-sour-salty combo appears all over the world in various forms; why do you think it’s so satisfying?).
The time commitment involved varies considerably. On nights when I’m making the kids’ favorite tacos, the whole effort is 40 minutes end to end, which includes cooking the meat, prepping the various toppings like sliced tomato and guacamole, and making refried beans from scratch. At the other end of the scale, at this very moment I am making my BBQ pork ribs for dinner tonight; yesterday afternoon I made the sauce and started the ribs in a very slow oven, where they will spend more than 24 hours until a quick finish under the broiler.
I spend as long as it takes to make the thing I want to eat. Sometimes that might be a few minutes; sometimes, it might be several hours. On average a weekday dinner has maybe about 25 minutes of effort, over an elapsed cooking period of and hour or so.
Food isn’t just fuel to me. Cooking isn’t just a necessity; cooking is in part, recreation; an hour in the kitchen is typically more fulfilling than an hour in front of the TV. Of course it’s also more effort, so there is a limit to it before it becomes tiring, but that’s not dissimilar to other forms of recreation where there is a level of activity.
I’m not keen on cooking, so my average time on a meal is 7 minutes.
Main course
Soup and toast … 3-4 mins
Omelet with fillings … 3-4 mins
Sausages and baked beans … 8-10 mins
Jacket potatoes with filling … 12 mins
Curry (order takeaway)
Dessert
Pineapple and icecream … straight from containers
Yoghurt … straight from container
Lunch takes about 15 minutes (generally grilling some fish and making a salad), but dinner is probably closer to an hour on average. I like cooking, and make relatively elaborate meals.
For dinner tonight, I’ve been marinading lamb cutlets for 48 hours, and will serve them with a couple of different salads and new jersey royal potatoes, so probably more like 30 minutes. If you don’t count the time it took me to prepare the marinade and trim the cutlets (15 mins).
I’ve got over 110 cookbooks, and use them every day. Hey, I enjoy it.
If you’re looking actual active prepping and cooking time, about 30 minutes or so. Start to finish for a typical dinner is usually about an hour for me, though I have many cooks that last several hours (like if I’m making a bolognese for pasta or lasagna, or if I’m making a stew.) I am definitely not a food=fuel person. Good food is essentially a drug to me. I seriously get dopamine hits when I taste something I really like. Like I can get downright eurphoric when a food hits just right. And it is a huge trigger of memories for me, as well.
. I really don’t do anything that elaborate, but I do a lot of stews and slow roasts that take several hours to cook and maybe 30-45 minutes to prep because I tend to move very slowly and methodically with prep. However on the other side of the equation, I also eat a fair bit of takeout so it is not like I do this every single day.