Food preparation

TastyReuben

TastyReuben

Nosh 'n' Splosh
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[Mod. Edit: This post and the following few have been moved from General chat thread to form a new topic]

I'm convinced I'm just a slow prepper. With the virus crap going on, I wash and sort of "pre-prep" my fresh produce now, which does save me time during actual cooking. I no longer have to grab some parsley, for example, wash it, try and dry it (hopeless), then chop it and pick the stuck bits off the board and the knife and my fingers. Since I washed it days ago when I put it away, that's done, it's plenty dry, so it's just chop and that's that.

This morning, making breakfast, I followed a recipe that said 25 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking. I timed my prep, and purposely went my usual speed...50 minutes. That involved chopping some bell pepper, some onion, some parsley, some hot pepper, and shredding a bit of cheese, and setting out measuring just a few other ingredients. 50 minutes. 🐢
 
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TastyReuben said:
This morning, making breakfast, I followed a recipe that said 25 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking. I timed my prep, and purposely went my usual speed...50 minutes. That involved chopping some bell pepper, some onion, some parsley, some hot pepper, and shredding a bit of cheese, and setting out measuring just a few other ingredients. 50 minutes. 🐢
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Blimey - that does sound rather slow. Are you really slow at the actual chopping or is it some other aspect of the prep?

I'm not sure what you describe for the recipe would take me even the 25 mins stated - more like 5 mins. I may have to do a timing just to see.
 
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morning glory said:
Blimey - that does sound rather slow. Are you really slow at the actual chopping or is it some other aspect of the prep?

I'm not sure what you desctibe for the recipe would take me even the 25 mins stated - more like 5 mins. I may have to do a timing just to see.
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I think, if anything, I'm really picky about a couple of things. First, I don't like anything on my hands, so the moment something gets on my hands, I'm washing and/or wiping them off.

For example, I needed a half an onion, chopped. As soon as I trimmed it and cut it in half, I rinsed my hands, because I got a little onion juice on one. Then I turned it on its side, did the choppy-choppy, rinsed my hands again, moved the onion out of the way, and rinsed them a final time. That would be true if nearly any wet thing I chop, so it was the same with the pepper.

The other thing I'm picky about is all the incidental bits, like the onion paper. If there's even the slightest bit of onion paper visible on the board, I have to get it up, or off the knife, or out of the pile. I'll occasionally watch a cooking show, and the cook will be mincing garlic or chopping an onion, and I'll see big, visible pieces of the paper right in there with the fleshy bit, and it'll turn my stomach, the thought of it going into the food, so I'm always careful about picking that out of the way.

Lastly, I'm just really careful to use every last bit of anything I've prepped. I don't like leaving stray bits of something behind, so I'll pick and pick at something, getting it off the board, or off the knife, or off the scraper.
 
TastyReuben said:
I think, if anything, I'm really picky about a couple of things. First, I don't like anything on my hands, so the moment something gets on my hands, I'm washing and/or wiping them off.

For example, I needed a half an onion, chopped. As soon as I trimmed it and cut it in half, I rinsed my hands, because I got a little onion juice on one. Then I turned it on its side, did the choppy-choppy, rinsed my hands again, moved the onion out of the way, and rinsed them a final time. That would be true if nearly any wet thing I chop, so it was the same with the pepper.

The other thing I'm picky about is all the incidental bits, like the onion paper. If there's even the slightest bit of onion paper visible on the board, I have to get it up, or off the knife, or out of the pile. I'll occasionally watch a cooking show, and the cook will be mincing garlic or chopping an onion, and I'll see big, visible pieces of the paper right in there with the fleshy bit, and it'll turn my stomach, the thought of it going into the food, so I'm always careful about picking that out of the way.

Lastly, I'm just really careful to use every last bit of anything I've prepped. I don't like leaving stray bits of something behind, so I'll pick and pick at something, getting it off the board, or off the knife, or off the scraper.
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40323
 
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TastyReuben said:
I'm convinced I'm just a slow prepper. With the virus crap going on, I wash and sort of "pre-prep" my fresh produce now, which does save me time during actual cooking. I no longer have to grab some parsley, for example, wash it, try and dry it (hopeless), then chop it and pick the stuck bits off the board and the knife and my fingers. Since I washed it days ago when I put it away, that's done, it's plenty dry, so it's just chop and that's that.

This morning, making breakfast, I followed a recipe that said 25 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking. I timed my prep, and purposely went my usual speed...50 minutes. That involved chopping some bell pepper, some onion, some parsley, some hot pepper, and shredding a bit of cheese, and setting out measuring just a few other ingredients. 50 minutes. 🐢
Click to expand...

I am a slow prepper, when a recipe gives a prep time I generally double it, because I don't cook very often I have to think about what I am doing-I think slowly :laugh:
 
TastyReuben said:
I think, if anything, I'm really picky about a couple of things. First, I don't like anything on my hands, so the moment something gets on my hands, I'm washing and/or wiping them off.

For example, I needed a half an onion, chopped. As soon as I trimmed it and cut it in half, I rinsed my hands, because I got a little onion juice on one. Then I turned it on its side, did the choppy-choppy, rinsed my hands again, moved the onion out of the way, and rinsed them a final time. That would be true if nearly any wet thing I chop, so it was the same with the pepper.

The other thing I'm picky about is all the incidental bits, like the onion paper. If there's even the slightest bit of onion paper visible on the board, I have to get it up, or off the knife, or out of the pile. I'll occasionally watch a cooking show, and the cook will be mincing garlic or chopping an onion, and I'll see big, visible pieces of the paper right in there with the fleshy bit, and it'll turn my stomach, the thought of it going into the food, so I'm always careful about picking that out of the way.

Lastly, I'm just really careful to use every last bit of anything I've prepped. I don't like leaving stray bits of something behind, so I'll pick and pick at something, getting it off the board, or off the knife, or off the scraper.
Click to expand...

The more of your posts I read, the more I think you need some serious couch time and lots of meds. :unsure:

CD
 
caseydog said:
The more of your posts I read, the more I think you need some serious couch time and lots of meds. :unsure:

CD
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My partner when he used to cook was quite similar to the way TastyReuben preps. He had at one time been a paste up artist in the print industry before it went digital. This required super accurate and meticulous work to assemble pages by hand. He was known to be very slow at the job compared to others - but he was kept on by the company because his work was always 100% accurate. It was the same with food preparation. He would take much longer than me but everything was perfectly prepped and he would leave the kitchen cleaner than when he started.

I'm somewhere in between. I quite like doing repetitive tasks accurately. But I dislike things clinging to my fingers or the boards. I don't rinse my hands off all the time but I do dislike it. On the other hand I like particular tasks to be speedy as I find them boring. I'll chop an onion as fast as I can. Same with peppers.
 
morning glory said:
He was known to be very slow at the job compared to others - but he was kept on by the company because his work was always 100% accurate.
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That's very interesting, because you just described me quite accurately in my work life.

I'm a coder by trade. I am meticulous with my coding, but it will be absolutely accurate to the requirements document.

I've worked for more clients and employers than I can remember, but at nearly every one, I can tell you, after a couple of months, I'd get pulled into the manager's office and told that I was too slow, that other coders were three times faster than me.

I'd nod and acknowledge that yes, I'm slow, but then I'd trot out the old coders' line of, "There's fast and there's right, take your pick."

Then, always, after a few months and quarterly metrics would come out, we'd see that Smith had half the code he pushed live returned because it wasn't right or because it broke something, and coder Jones, she had maybe a quarter of her code that had to be redone.

My code? 100% spot on. Right the first time, right every time. To appreciate that, returned code meant time troubleshooting, time recoding, time retesting, time to push live again, time filling out all the required forms to do all that, and time is money. That's why so many corporate projects like that go over budget.

Nowadays, my managers tell me that it's lucky my work is so good because it allows them to overlook all my...quirks. Yeah, let's call them quirks. :)
 
I have to add, I'm watching an old episode of Rick Bayless making refried beans with Julia Child, and he went to mince some garlic, and he minced the root end, the little hard end, right up with the rest of the garlic, and I yelled quite a bit at him to knock that crap off. :laugh:

MrsTasty says I yell at cooking shows like other people yell at sporting events.
 
I'm known for whipping up something to eat real quick, with little ingredients. I'm pretty quick in the kitchen, but I do make a hell of a mess. Wife's happy to clean up after me after she gets a nice meal.

Russ
 
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