I don't see, why cooking should be a competition for speed in the first place.
I like to cook, but I don't have tons of time to cook as a hobby. New recipes are worked into our regular meal times. If it takes me an hour longer than the estimated time to prep and cook, I've made everyone wait an extra hour, throwing off any other plans for the evening. That can be discouraging and lead to wondering "why did they say it only takes 20 minutes? Are they just guessing, or am I just a slow cook?" Hence this thread. :)
Cooking for the moment aside, consider lunch. I'm German (sadly, the country became closer to the US in this respect). But if you ever worked in France or Switzerland for example (not to talk about countries even further into the South), you will spot much a difference here - yet in time spent, but also in the opinion what is important at all. Cooking is the same - it is not all "hungry family" (I certainly agree, at times it is), these are more often than not rationalizations. When I am cooking, the kitchen full of people is the most satisfying situation. It doesn't matter really, how long it lasts. This is not lost time, on the contrary! Also not in the context of work, because it eventually produces energy (I don't mean the calories) also for this.
A final small example: I have an Italian espresso machine here in my offices kitchen. Producing an espresso or cappuccino requires to do all steps manually: grinding beans, evaluating the pressure on the analog gauge, provisioning the milk, making foam from it, etc. - time-consuming! But it is a micro ritual, making my head free enough for handling some of the kinds of small problems, appearing during work. I could also buy something 'modern' using pads, maybe some sort of remote control, even a robot serving the final result to me (are there such things?). I certainly will never do this.
My wife and I both do a lot of cooking and it is a fun, shared activity where we can move fast or slow, and talk about things. We also spent some time learning—learning knife skills, learning new techniques for cooking, trying new cuisines or new recipes.
However, if you are chopping an onion and hold the knife wrong, hold the onion wrong, or make the wrong cuts, it is not only slower but it is also more dangerous. If your knife is dull, you push the knife harder, and that is more dangerous. If chopping an onion is safe, you can move faster. It is a simple skill to learn and everyone who cooks should learn it.
Missing the related point from the comment is... what? Deliberate?
(E.g 99.9 being 40 min would mean that 999 out of 1 000 people got it done faster than 40 min)
A recipe is not a black box. Most recipes are short and can be written on a half page of paper. If it calls for two chopped onions and you know that it takes you an “eternity” to chop onions, then add two eternities to the cooking time.
And as long as you are spending two eternities chopping onions, why not spend 90 seconds watching a video on YouTube that explains how to do it correctly? For most people—if you are cooking regularly, and practicing good technique, you will naturally get faster over time. If, like many people, you are cooking for decades, then you will be slow for only a short time.
I forgot an /s. 99.9 percentile would require doing each meal in the cooking book ... 1000 or 10 000 times by different people to get an accurate timing :)
> chopping onions, why not spend 90 seconds watching a video on YouTube that explains how to do it correctly?
That sounds like a good idea, could get back 1 000 x those two minutes, in a lifetime, and more yummy food and can impress others with the onion skills. (No /s here. I'll try to remember tomorrow, youtube.)
I can understand why cooking can be slow and painful for people new to the activity. However, if you want to get fast at cooking, it is not that hard to get fast. Knife skills, multitasking, and planning will make everything go much faster. If your knife skills are not great (say, takes you longer than about a minute to dice an onion) or you are tired from a long day of work and aren’t in the mood to move fast, prep will take a lot longer.
Just observing people do prep I think it’s fairly plain to see that tons of people are just damn slow at it, either because they don’t enjoy going fast or because their skills aren’t up to par. And there are plenty of cooking shows where the contestants are under strict time limits but must still do all their prep within the time limit. Cutthroat Kitchen usually has a 30 minute limit, including prep, and including acts of sabotage that increase the difficulty.