Mid-week meals involve one of us prepping steps during the day depending on who has free time at the right moment. We do the final steps together while catching up on each other’s day. Maybe an hour of total prep time but usually less than half of that time requires active involvement.
And when you're doing this kind of thing for family dinner you and up using shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing, rolls from the bakery, premade desserts, jarred sauces and gravies which all hide the real time it takes to put something like that together by outsourcing it. I think the miracle of modern logistics being so normal makes people forget how much of home cooking is shortcuts that weren't always available and were marketed toward homemakers who labored over a hot stove and needed a break.
At what point is something no longer a shortcut? Do you also consider the time it takes you to track, shoot, carry, & butcher an animal? Or do you take the shortcut of buying your meat? Do you grow your own wheat? Grind your own flour? Or are those shortcuts too?
* A cut of meat is atomic, that cut pre-marinated isn't.
* Flour is atomic, a Jiffy box is composite.
* Oil is atomic, bottled dressing is composite.
* Potatoes are atomic, frozen french fries aren't.
* 5 spice powder is atomic, but cinnamon sugar is composite.
* Cream is atomic, bottled Alfredo isn't.
* Hidden Valley packets are atomic, but bottled ranch isn't. But when bottled ranch is used as an ingredient in a larger dish it becomes atomic again.
* Rice is atomic, Uncle Ben's isn't. Same rule as ranch when it's used in a larger dish.
* Bread is composite until you make a sandwich with it.
* But this rule doesn't apply to jarred pasta sauce when made into spaghetti. But it does apply to jarred pizza sauce when made into pizza.
Like sure the rules are organic and messy as all cultural norms all, but if you cook with any regularity you just "know" them because it defines when you're allowed to say "I made this" when presenting the dish to others.
In the context of healthy diets for living to 100 I wonder what the best axioms are.
Why is cinnamon sugar "composite" whereas 5 spice is atomic? Who defines these? Are you suggesting that if you use packaged cinnamon sugar on donuts you can't claim to have made them?
For reference, I mostly to roast and grind from whole spices. If I need garam masala, Chinese 5 spice, Lebanese 7 spice, etc, I'll make it from scratch. If I new cumin or coriander powder, etc, I'll grind them in my spice grinder.
Are you suggesting that jarred pasta sauce and pizza are different to each other? Following your criteria, I'd classify both as composite.
Not to say that I disagree with most of the list - there's a distinction between highly processed and cooking dishes from scratch, but it's more nuanced than what you've presented here.
> I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples.
> I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums.
> I then thought that programming it was cheating, so I learned to play drums for real.
> I then thought using bought drums was cheating, so I learned to make my own.
> I then thought using premade skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it.
> I then thought that that was cheating too, so I grew my own goat from a baby goat.
> I also think that is cheating, but I’m not sure where to go from here.
> I haven’t made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all.
I cook a fairly standard south Indian dinner of daal stew, rice + stir fried veggies a couple times a week in ~30-45 minutes of total work. Nothing preprocessed, premixed, or premade other than (and these are really stretching the definitions thereof):
* Asofoetida powder that's been preground and dried for me
* The rice has been polished and debran-ed (ie, turned into white rice)
* pressure cooked lentils (I make a big batch every weekend or so and freeze it into dinner sized portions)
It's admittedly been years since I last watched Good Eats, but that is not how I remember it all. Almost everything he demonstrated was just as applicable when throwing together a quick pasta dish as it is to making a full 7 course dinner.
An added component is how many meals we are talking about. Making breakfast, lunch and dinner can be very painful unless you meal prep or get quick and easy items (readymade salads, overnight oats, frozen food etc.)
OK, sure, baking bread takes a while.
The more you cook something the quicker it is.
There are many shortcuts, such as:
- cooking rice in the evening before.
- Cooking extra.
- Using a pressure-cooker.
- Using a mini oven.
- Using the griller for more heat.
- Sometimes using the microwave to pre cook things can lead to faster times. (Not often for me).
- Purchasing partially prepared items. Pre cut carrots etc.
- Using a deep fryer.