/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.19945626]

a big reason why i dont cook as much as i should is because of how fucking slow i am

>decide to make chicken paprikash with 9 chicken thighs
>should be easy and quick enough
>after including the time cutting the onions and garlic, prepping the raw chicken, browning the chicken, cooking the onions, making the roux with the tomato paste and flour, reducing the chicken broth and mix a little, and simmering the chicken, it took me almost 2 hours
im such a slow ass retard.

[Anonymous No.19945672]

>>19945626
Being slow is okay, just think of ways you can shave time off the next time you make it.

[Anonymous No.19945691]

>>19945626
There is no roux in chicken paprikash, you mong.

[Anonymous No.19945695]

>>19945626
Try using pre peeled garlic.

[Anonymous No.19945906]

>>19945626
im slow as shit too, gotta learn methods to get quicker
>garlic press to get the garlic minced really quickly, works on ginger but make sure to cut the ginger into small pieces, i just broke mine because i put too big of a piece in it
>knife skills for the chopped veggies, for me it just happened in time but i can now cut up the veggies in half the time, an onion takes maybe 2 mins now
>really lazy, but a food processer can dice/eviscerate ingredients super quickly
>prep ahead of time, my best cooking ends up that way because ill dice and chop the veggies the night before and just have to dump the bag into the food
>slow cookers are great for meats, get it going before work, come home and meat is done with little risk of burning
gl anon, make sure to start as early as you can with cooking

[Anonymous No.19945913]

>>19945626
get a pull choppa, shit saves tens of minutes off many of my preparations. Mine cost me $9.

also I hope you shelled-out the dosh for proper Ungarian paprika

[Anonymous No.19946184]

>>19945626
none of these answers so far mention the biggest thing you're missing: most of those steps should be happening simultaneously.

start stock on heat. Meanwhile -
prep chicken, start browning. Meanwhile -
prep veg.
Make roux, add prepared veg and chicken, simmer. Meanwhile -
Clean up.

you might be slow, but learn to be slow at several things instead of one thing at a time, and you'll cut a lot of downtime out of the process

[Anonymous No.19946190]

>>19945626
Try to do two things at the same time, it can be overwhelming, patience is key. When i worked with people who were far more skilled than I it looked impossible for him to do that many things at the same time. I still will never do some of that, but i can do a few to several things at once now (twenty years later).

[Anonymous No.19946195]

>>19946184
That there.

[Anonymous No.19946196]

>>19945913
Just throw everything in the food processor.

>>19945626
Prep everything the day before.

[Anonymous No.19947785]

>>19945626
i did a chicken paprikash too a while back .
>cook the chicken in the oven for a bit to not get salmonelad
>chop a shitload of onions , caramalise them
>throw in some tomato paste and pepper paste
>some condiments
>the chicken and sour cream
done and dusted , something like an hour to make with above decent results

[Anonymous No.19948033]

>>19945626
Sometimes I am slow and it doesn't matter you can listen to a podcast or sports on the radio or just music or whatever it's fine

[Anonymous No.19948056]

>>19945626
speed comes with skill and comfort. enjoy yourself, just cook. try cooking the same dish a lot of times and make note of the patterns you do, but don't critique in the moment. get comfortable in your kitchen, if time flies let it fly. try to keep ingredient/prep/cooking experimentation down to just one thing each new iteration of the dish, then note the differences. if you want to practice speed anyway, invite a friend or family member over for dinner who wont stop loving you if you serve them shit and don't leave yourself more than an hour of time to do everything. then, reflect.

also in general, I've noticed a lot of people are bad at reflecting. simple way to do it - imagine the person you were while cooking as a different person. be compassionate towards them. tell them you get it, and try to actually get it. imagine how the conversation goes from there, and practice.

[Anonymous No.19948098]

>>19945626
2 hours isn't really that bad. You started from scratch. When you see people cooking on YouTube, everything had been preped in advance. So it looks like they really fast.