Ways to Cook Everything Faster

Slide 1Cook
Everything
Faster
Overview
There are times when you can leisurely cook a meal, sipping a glass of wine while
music or a podcast plays softly in the background. But at least for some one, cooking
a meal is usually a race against the clock to get dinner on the table.
Many people love being efficient and always welcome shortcuts that help them prep,
cook, and clean just a little bit faster.
Start with heat
Before doing anything else, turn on the oven, crank up the broiler, preheat a skillet,
and set water to boil. Appliances, pots, pans, and water take time to get hot. Boiling
water is always the first move.
Take one
minute to
mentally walk
through what
you’re cooking
Before you start cooking, taking just one minute to think through what you’re about
to do makes all the difference in the world. If you’re making multiple dishes, you can
pick out what takes the longest to cook and the exact order to prep and cook things,
seeing where there are opportunities to prep things while something else is cooking.
It’s a lot more efficient to have a mental game plan so you don’t hit any bumps, like
forgetting to get water boiling.
Set up
appliances and
heat the oven
There’s a reason why oven recipes always start with having you heat the oven! Get the
oven on before you even pull food out or use your oven’s delay start setting so it’s
already turned on when you walk in the kitchen. Using convection to heat the oven
will also speed things up, and you can always switch it back to regular bake once it’s
heated.
boiling
immediately
Get that pot of water for boiling or steaming onto the stove ASAP so you can prep
while it’s heating up. Heck, don’t even take your coat off or open the mail before
getting that pot going. Don’t forget to put a lid on it; lids are your friends! Water will
boil faster and covered food cooks faster, too. If you have an electric kettle, those can
also be handy for getting water heated up fast.
Don’t dirty an
extra dish
Use kitchen scissors to chop cooked or tender raw vegetables (especially greens)
right in the bowl or pan.
Clean your
produce
efficiently
Trim your produce first if you can, like taking tops off root vegetables or cutting up
the lettuce, then wash it after. This means there’s less to wash, and you can then wash
what you need in one go. Combining things in a colander for rinsing can also reduce
water usage.
prepping order
and multitask
Well-written recipes list ingredients in the order they’re used and are usually a great
guide for the order your should prep things. While those just learning to cook should
prep everything beforehand so they can fully focus on cooking, more experienced
cooks can multitask. For example, onions take time to caramelize or brown, so chop
your onions and get those cooking first before you measure and chop the other
ingredients.
soften
Baking recipes often call for softened butter, but sometimes you don’t have the time
to wait for it to come to room temperature. A quick trick is to grate cold or
preferably frozen butter on a box grater into nice flaky shreds; grated butter will
soften in the same amount of time it takes to heat the oven!
Cut food into
smaller pieces
Stir-frying is one of the best quick-cooking techniques because the proteins and
vegetables are cut down into small pieces, so remember that the smaller the pieces,
the quicker the cooking. Thinly sliced chicken breast will cook in minutes flat,
whereas a thick, uncut chicken breast will take more time to cook.
Use a garbage
bowl
If your trash can or compost bin isn’t located directly next to your prep area, try using
a garbage bowl instead. A garbage bowl is a large bowl or container that you put right
on your prep area to toss unwanted things into as you prep. This means you don’t have
to make multiple trips to the trash can or compost bin, and it also minimizes the
chance of food scraps ending up on the kitchen floor since you’re not walking around
constantly.
cooking
Big, thick pieces of food take longer to cook through than those cut small or sliced
thin. You should cut chicken cutlets in half so they cook faster; chop veggies
accordingly.
Let your pots
do double duty
When you sauté or simmer something moist—such as vegetables, beans, or sauces—
lay a different food on top (especially a protein like fish, chicken, or eggs), cover with
a lid, and let the steam naturally cook that upper layer. For instance, for a fast eggs
Florentine, steam the eggs on top of the spinach rather than poaching them
separately.
when braising
Submerge your braising ingredients in about one inch of liquid, cover the pot, and
cook, turning occasionally, adding a little liquid as necessary.
One sandwich
four
Cut a baguette in half the long way, assemble one giant sandwich, then cut that into
as many pieces as you like.
Cut around the
core
This method is a fast way to prep apples, pears, tomatoes, cabbage, peaches, and bell
peppers: Slice downward around the core, removing flesh in three or four pieces;
then cut flesh into slices or wedges.
Serve up raw
vegetables
Instead of roasting winter veggies, eat them raw. Squash, beets, parsnips, and
celery root make great salads and slaws. Since root vegetables are sturdy, grate
them. If they’re still too crispy for comfort, marinate them for a half hour or
longer in a vinaigrette.
food processor
The machine does the job in a few pulses, and the small pieces will broil in about
half the time. Plus, you get more of the delicious crispy bits that others can’t get
enough of
summer soup
Some soups need to simmer for hours, but cold soups, such as gazpacho, involve
simply putting ingredients in a blender and turning it on. So underrated.
Use frozen
vegetables
They work well in soup or any dish. Minimally processed and chilled immediately
after harvest, frozen vegetables are an anomaly in the frozen-food aisle—a true gift
to hurried cooks.
meatballs into
meat “drops”
When making meatballs, the most time-consuming part is rolling them. The
solution? Don’t. Use two spoons to drop little mounds into the hot skillet. They’ll
brown beautifully—and taste just as good.
Make
“unstuffed”
cabbage
Blanching cabbage leaves to make them pliable is onerous. Use cooked cabbage as a
base instead of a wrapper—it’ll provide the same taste with much less work.
Mince and
freeze ginger
Speaking of ginger, since it can be a pain to peel little bits at a time, when a recipe
calls for minced ginger you should peel and mince a whole knob, put it into a small
plastic bag and freeze it. The next time you need ginger just slice some off with
sharp knife.
Freeze tomato
paste
Now that we’re talking about freezing things, whenever you open a can of tomato
paste and don’t use the whole thing (which is most of the time), put the rest into a
small plastic bag and freeze it. The next time you need tomato paste, just slice off thin
pieces with a sharp knife.
Brown meat
on one side
If you’re making a stew or a braise that requires browning meat, feel free to just
brown it really well one side (rather than turning it four times to brown every single
surface). The point is to develop flavor, and one nicely caramlized side is usually
sufficient for that.
Conclusion
Whether you call these kitchen hacks, strategies, tips, tricks, techniques or anything
else, weaving some common sense shortcuts into your day-to-day cooking will
improve your quality of life in the kitchen.