Comment by mindentropy
3 years ago
Exactly what I have experienced. Even whatever time is mentioned in the cookbooks, I was never able to beat it. It takes a minimum of 45 minutes to prepare a decent dish for me. I too am an amateur and I measure my time with my mother's time and I see a difference but not so much. I do not do multitasking if I have something on the stove which requires constant stirring or moving around.
Also I found that slow cooking brings out the best flavours and aroma.
My sister was a chef. I cook okay but the very difference with her is 1. the skills, 2. the tools and 3. the ability to do things in parallel. All that means she's a lot faster than me.
1. To chop an onion or a shallot real fast, you need to do it a lot. In restaurant, you can probably chop 100x what you can do at home. Grated carrot with julienne knive ? It seems absurd to me at the time, but in the end that's a training.
2. To not lose time, you need the proper tools (and know how to use them). Sharped knive, flour stifler, ... . For example, my knives are not sharpened often enough, which means I cannot chop vegetables that well.
3. Cooking several things in parrallel will go wrong if you do not know what to look at before things get burned. If you are too "prudent", you will lower the fires and degrade your scalability.