I love cooking and have recently become obsessed with it, but doing it well is extremely time consuming. The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets, etc.) and cleaning all this easily takes over an hour per meal, never mind the time to actually cook the meal (which, depending on what I’m cooking takes 1-4 hours of active prep time). Also, finding high quality ingredients requires planning and trips to farmers markets. I could save a bunch of time and money by buying from the local grocery store and using cheap dishwasher safe products, but I’ll be dissatisfied with the end result, so I might as well eat out somewhere inexpensive then.

A few tips I learned from a professional chef that changed everything:

— Mise en place (Get everything you need prepped)

— Clean as you cook

Get a bunch of small glass dishes and get all the ingredients you need measured, chopped and placed into those dishes. This will make combining them effortless when cooking.

If you've done prep, you'll have some down time while cooking. As you finish using pans and utensils wash them and put them away. By the time you're done cooking you'll also be almost done cleaning—save the pan that needs to soak a bit in the sink.

It took a short culinary program to really drill those into my head, but they are game changers for sure. Now I get a bit anxious when my “station” isn’t tidy, like I’m disappointing the chef. The other habit drilled out of me was watching food cook...very few things require constant attention and that’s all time that should be spent on prep and cleaning.

I use stainless steel mixing bowls, lighter and cheaper than glass and they stack really well. A large cutting board (24x18) helps you work clean.

I've found that listening to stovetop food sizzle will usually tell you what's going on. I imagine I'm generally hearing the amount of water left in the food?

But curious about any other approaches to "No look" you have!

As Alton Brown says "If its not sizzling, its burning"

Prep is like 90% of the work when it comes to cooking. Putting it all together on some heat for a specific amount of time is the easy part!

Also sharpen your knife before prepping. Night and day :)

I've lived by this advice for years and I can attest to the benefits.

Xcelerate says >"The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets"<

Toss the cast iron and stainless steel skillets and buy nonstick skillets, cheap or expensive. When they wear out, replace them.

I've gone through more than two sets of cast iron cookware trying to "season" them properly. "Seasoning cast iron" never works, either consistently or well. It is little more than marketing horseshit the iron cookware industry feeds to foodies who cannot resist the perfect skillet they imagine exists on the far side of the hill.

> Toss the cast iron

Blasphemy! (As someone raised in the southern US)

In all seriousness, the biggest difference I've found in properly keeping up cast iron is using the right cleaning method.

Water. Or just a bit of highly-diluted dish soap.

I know there's ways to do proper coating (oven clean, etc), but most of the time I just hot fire mine on a gas burner with some oil. Works fine.

Also, there's no way in hell I'd cook cast iron on an electric top. (though I don't have experience with induction)

And finally... cook things with more fat. Bacon in the pan frequently goes a long way towards making it happy.

My experience is completely opposite.

I ditched my (expensive) non-stick pans two years ago and bought a decent stainless steel pan and a cast iron pan (since then I've also upgraded to SS stockpots and sauce pans).

This was the best thing I've done in the kitchen. My cast iron pan is the best pan I've ever used and is as non-stick as any "non-stick" pan I have used. I cook pancakes, omelets, and fried eggs without any sticking and minimal oil. It is may daily cooker.

My stainless is okay for things like omelets and fried eggs but it takes more skill and understanding of the pan and I still sometimes end up with lots of sticking. But for things like meats, pan sauces, or grilled cheeses I love it.

My advice to any home-cook is to ditch the non-stick pans, buy a cheap 12" cast-iron pan, and a decent SS pan and watch a few videos about using them (e.g., SS pans needs to be heated to the point where the Leidenfrost effect occurs). These two things can transform your cooking and open a world of high-temp searing, pan sauces, and stainless steel tools (I can't stand using plastic spatulas any more, like when I use my teflon coated griddle).

Also, keep Barkeepers Friend on hand for cleaning SS pans (otherwise life is hard)

I completely agree that a proper nonstick pans is easier to clean and sticks less, but cast iron has an incredibly high specific heat (and thermal mass) that makes searing food a breeze, and till recent years consumer grade nonstick pans couldn't even take the heat needed to do so.

Tangential anecdote: For a few years in college I had a single cast iron skillet as my only pot or pan. It's all you need to make tacos, soup, noodles, bread, shepherds pie, or a host of other things. Being deep enough to hold a few servings of food for a couple people and being able to go in the oven go a long ways toward its versatility.

What do you think the ‘somewhere inexpensive’ restaurant uses for ingredients and equipment?

The main problem with restaurants is the shitty vegetable oils they use. It's horrible for you. Unless they're a REALLY high end restaurant, they're using junk industrial seed oils for all of their cooking. That stuff is what causes obesity and heart disease. At home you can cook with butter, olive oil, etc. But I guarantee, most restaurants do not cook with high quality fats.

Agree 100%, the #1 reason I should cook at home more where I always use butter, coconut oil etc. Either need to do big cook ups of extra tasty food and pack lots of meals, or find more real simple meals to whip up quickly.

I have heard this a couple of places. Can you elaborate on why it's so bad and share a source or two.

A restaurant benefits from the economy of scale --- preparing food for a lot of people amortizes the effort spent on upkeep and $ on equipment. Also there's a team, vs. just yourself when you cook yourself, and specialization increases efficiency too. As for ingredients, well, YMMV; personally I frequent quite a few 'somewhere inexpensive' restaurants that minimally process quality ingredients.

Yeah, besides chain restaurants (which probably use a bunch of prepackaged, microwaved stuff), most places stock their kitchen with pretty fresh ingredients. Probably from a big restaurant retailer like Sysco or Restaurant Depot, but I doubt it's worse than what you can get at a grocery store.

Cooking for myself became easier when I started using rice/quinoa/beans + meat with vegetables. The first part is a single pot, and can usually be made in large enough quantity to last most of the week (via reheating or reuse, like old rice into fried rice). The second part can also be done in a single pot. And I have found that vegetables last far enough into the week that usually one trip covers me. To handle running out, make stews and other freezable things for the end of the week (or to mix things up earlier in the week) and store in single-serving portions.

I had periods of doing something similar too. Make a pot of stew / curry / jambalaya with rice, eat with some salad.

Advantage of stew / curry is they can be frozen and later thawed and reheated. Over time though it got really monotonous for me. I like good food, and importantly variety.

Feels like there is some opportunity here. A way to scale home cooking for a bunch of individuals. Like if a few people in close proximity, say in the same apartment complex, rotated responsibilities for cooking. You can get bulk savings, time savings and variety.

The real thing would be to have a freezer. Cook enough for now and freeze a cache for later. Do this quick enough and you’ll be able to stock up multiple recipes in the freezer with omit needing to cook once a week (for me, preferably). My trouble is my apartment won’t allow a freezer.

Not everything is freezer friendly though. Many seafood tastes pretty bad after being frozen and reheated. Ditto for anything that is supposed to be crispy / crunchy etc or any texture that’s not soft.

Somethings like fried foods heat up ok to great in the oven instead of microwave.

Agree. Cooking works out much better when in relationships.

I am surprised BlueApron isn't doing well as they taught me how to cook, what to get, in a relatively simple instructions.

That may be part of why they aren't doing well.

Once you know how to cook, you don't really need the training wheels any more, and the cost of their overhead is just that: extra cost.

I have a hard time imagining them beating grocery stores / delivery long-term.

Maybe if they get enough customers to get economies of scale so large they can offer meals cheaper than grocery stores, despite their extra overhead (meal planning, recipe development, and software maintenance come to mind immediately).

I could tell this "mail order meal kit" industry was doomed when local groceries tried to hop on to the trend (selling the boxes in their stores, with very little overhead: no need to ship an insulated box across the country), and it didn't take off.

Well, if you're already at the grocery store, you probably have a shopping list and a pre-filled box isn't what you're there for.

I bought food to cook for 2 days at a time. Requires 3 visits to grocery store per week. Given your shopping list is small doesn't take that much.

Yes but then you loose the bulk discounts. Getting 2 days (for one person) worth of veggies, meat etc isn't much cheaper than eating out. Plus the time spent doing the grocery shopping 3 times a week, with the time to cook the individual portion, then cleaning up for me just wasn't worth it. Individual preference obviously, but just didn't make sense for me most of the time.

You can definitely argue on the time aspect, it is definitely much longer, but if you actually start adding tax and tip and really look at transactions, there's no way that eating out is anywhere close than food cost.