alt Hacker NewsKitchen optimizations
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Less known optimisation: have a slide rule handy[1]. They are amazing for working with proportions which happens all the time in the kitchen.
Just today I needed 200 g of chocolate for a dessert. The bars were 160 g each and made into 21 rectangles. Set the slide rule to 200:160 and read out the value of x:21, which turns out to be 26.25 -- the number of rectangles needed. So convenient to be able to do that quickly and with messy hands.
One thing we do is to load a new dishwasher tablet immediately upon emptying the dishes.
Result:
If there’s a tablet: it’s dirty.
If there’s no tablet: it’s clean.
Load stuff directly into dishwasher and as soon as you decide you don't need it.
In general small cleaning tasks are great filler for any wait in dish-making
I got a bunch of time-saving (or at least time-sync-effort-having) from just air-fryer option to run 2 programs at time (basically set different times and it will take care of starting them in such way they both finish at once).
Put carbs like potatoes in one chamber, meat in other, set and start it, make some salad/tea/whatever else in mean time, 15 minutes and done.
> Especially because getting the water boiling is so often a limiting factor, it's worth considering this sort of optimization. I probably spent extra hours per year cooking before I changed how I boil water. There are many common tasks like this in the kitchen; it's worth thinking carefully about them.
Prepare stuff while it boils, like, you either boil stuff into stew in the water or boil some kind of pasta or other carb there, surely there is plenty of other parts of the dish to make in meantime?
A foot pedal faucet is the biggest optimization I need to make. It's like giving yourself a third arm in many situations.
> If you are time-constrained and do a lot of kitchen work, though, it's worth paying attention to these optimizations.
Absolutely. However, lately I've been going at humdrum daily stuff at a pace so slowly it's just a tad shy of ridiculous. Things like making coffee, walking the dogs, vacuuming, driving (not obstructing anyone, just a relaxed pace) and also cooking. I've found very little downside; if you relax while you're doing your dailies you don't need to rush through so you can plop down on the couch.
I don't have children though, not sure how that factors in.
I think B. F. Skinner liked that sort of things. (In "Walden Two" he gives a rather detailed description of a contraption to conveniently carry around a glass full of a hot beverage without risk of spilling; I'm positive it was one of his inventions.)
Embrace asynchronous cooking with a rice cooker. Maybe you can cook rice in a pot, maybe you can't, but you definitely can't do it while you're busy working or when you're out of the house. It cooks the rice and waits for when you're ready.
I cook every day and I did not relate to this.
Make frequently-used items accessible close to where they will be needed. Install drawers throughout the kitchen -- especially below the counter. Prep before you cook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place).
And just keep practicing; you will naturally get better and faster.
Right now I have a large and stylish open kitchen but there are times where I miss having a galley kitchen, where I could stand in one place and reach everything I needed - pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, knives and accessories on magnetic racks on the walls, fridge contents reachable while standing at the stove... somehow it even had enough prep space.
I've found that cooking extra food with the intent of freezing it in individual portions is a game changer for when I'm alone at home - my fiancée can also pack them for lunch. Rice, curries, ragoûts are really nice to get out of the freezer, put on a plate in the microwave and eat a few minutes later.
Look at Souper Cubes (or any silicon knockoff) for the molds.
I'm grateful for all the notes here. I seem to have been insufficiently clear on the subject of boiling water, so I've written a follow-up post:
A smaller oven. Ovens in the US are sized for 1 meal a year, Thanksgiving. If you instead use the smallest oven you can, it will be more efficient to operate and cook more precisely. Also easier to clean.
Unfortunately small ovens are frequently just geared at the cheaper market. So can cut corners on reliability. But these days that’s not uncommon.
Working on your knife skills will pay off more than any small organizational optimizations and it's fun.
The top oven of a 30" double oven heats up almost as fast as a toaster oven, you don't have to bend over far to use it, and it takes up no counter space. I thought these were just for people who frequently cook huge meals for large gatherings but we moved into a house with one, used the top oven constantly, and it became a must-have when it was time to replace the range.
I got a gigantic weston vacuum sealer for Christmas one year. Fortunately we have the counter space for it, and drawer space beneath it for the bags, in our pantry. In the amounts we cook it's taken a long time to break even on any cost savings but it's a quality of life game changer. Plus sous vide. In a world where less-than-super-premium American butchery has gone from mediocre to downright sloppy in my lifetime, it's very, very nice being able to break down big roasts and subprimals into chops and steaks and smaller roasts etc and trim them up nicely and freeze whatever we're not going to use immediately. I tie roasts before freezing them.
Just buy the big box of sharpies for the kitchen. They walk off and dry out and get that weird thing that happens when they touch something oily. I mark things like super-duper-pasteurized dairy products with the date opened. I'm not michelin-star disciplined about using painter's tape for other containers. If I have a subprimal's worth of meat to go in the freezer, I use a label maker.
Speaking of kitchen optimizations - I’m building a voice assistant specifically for cooking that lets you ask contextual questions hands-free while cooking. ‘How much butter?’ ‘What’s next?’ etc. - instead of constantly needing to look at your phone/tablet with messy hands. In beta now if anyone wants to try it.
The boiling water thing reduces waiting time but doubles active work time. It would be much more efficient to just work on other tasks while the water boils if there are any.
This is also one thing I love about sous vide cooking. It’s slow in terms of total time elapsed but usually very efficient in terms of time spent actively cooking.
I find kitchenwork provides good case studies for computational thinking. Thinking about stacking dishes by their sizes leads to a tour of sorting algorithms and datastructures. Thinking about predicting the prices of different preparations that use the same ingredients leads to principal component analysis.
There's also the application of computational methods to cooking.
No discussion of kitchen optimization is complete without mentioning the Finnish Dish Drying Cabinet invented by Maiju Gebhard while working as the head of the Household Department of the Finnish Work Efficiency Institute (1944-1945)
My own kitchen problems are all related to my ADHD.
1. I never even think about food till I'm already hungry, so any meal which takes a long time to cook is out. (I'm meal prepping a bit more often these days, which helps.)
2. I just _cannot_ cook two things and have them ready at the same time. So at least one of the things needs to be something that can hold once cooked. Pasta tends to work well.
* Deli cups.
* Quarter hotel pans (the stackable kind).
* Painter's tape and Sharpies.
* Zojirushi water boiler.
* Foot pedal sink.
This sort of reminds me of those single powder or whatever meals they were awhile back - for those that need to eat but take no pleasure or dedicate no time.
For me, cooking (prep and cleanup included) is about enjoying the process, understanding what I am making and taking time doing it.
If I want quick, sure there are options around.
Cooking for me is relaxation and time away not thinking about tech and the like.
I've found the blue tape and a sharpie to be a game changer. It helps me keep my fridge tidy without having to go through everything and guess if it's still ok. I find I actually waste less food when I throw things out regularly because I know that if it's in there it's good to eat and it doesn't get lost among old leftovers that aren't any good anymore anyway.
Chinese cooking is really optimized, the recipes (well, for home cooked food) are fairly direct and involve simple prep steps that can be performed quickly. Even if I wasn’t married to a Chinese, I wouldn’t think of cooking anything else just due to the time savings alone.
I’ve been working an a meal planning application that so far can order all your groceries after planning a meal. There is a basic task graph now to estimate time to finish and takes into account different euqipment like a food processor or pressure cooker.
It’s at https://mezi.fyi would love any feedback there is a demo on the landing page
This is great keep going.
I find mis-en-place is a great optimization, especially if you have kids.
For hot water, I have a 2L thermos which I keep filled with boiling water to make hot drinks, with a quick reboil if necessary, and also to use as cooking water. I think there are plumbed in versions of this which would be even better.
Bread-making - I just use a bread machine to make day-to-day bread (specials hand baked etc on weekends sometimes.) For the daily, I pre-measure ingredients (both wet and dry) for 10+ loaves, individually packaged (kids are a great production line again). The to make the bread, just throw in the packets and press the buttons...
No doubt most people already do this, but for some reason my wife can't get it .. keep everything in the same place all the time. It really wastes time and 'stressergy' to have to hunt for the measuring spoons or the molasses or whatever because they were put back in a different place.
I'm sure commercial chefs could add a huge list of tricks that are still applicable at home to this.
If you've got a gas stove and need to boil water to cook with, boil it first in an electric kettle. It'll boil much faster.
Buy a modern pressure-cooker (e.g. Instant Pot). It cooks many items with zero loss in quality--often in less than 1/2 the time.
I have a few things that I can add. If you just want an adequate meal with the least amount of work, invest in:
* multicooker, one with a pressure cooking setting. You just have to press a few buttons and forget about it. If you know how much time it takes to cook something (for example - chickpeas, 26 minutes), you just set it for 26 minutes and go do something else. The multicooker will keep it warm for a few hours after it's done. No need to turn off the stove or anything like that. There's hardly any vapor released. You can make lots of dishes under pressure - pasta, lentils, chickpeas, beans... You can steam (almost?) any vegetable, as well. For beans and chickpeas the total prep time is hours, but the actual human time is minutes. Just put them under water for a few hours (takes ~30 seconds), then drain and put into the multicooker (takes ~1 minute). It takes a few minutes of actual work, but it also lets you forget about it, as it won't over-boil or anything like that. I can put something and go out, come back after a few hours and have a hot meal ready. I only use my regular stove top to make popcorn once in a while. The only downside is not being able to add different ingredients after the cooking has begun, as it's under pressure. And the "26" minutes above don't include the time it takes to reach the required pressure and the time it takes to release it. You can speed both steps by boiling water in a kettle before putting in the multicooker and by using the release valve after the cooking is done.
* bread maker - literally put water, oil, salt, sugar, flour and yeast one after the other, press a few buttons, wait a few hours and you get a perfect bread. Beats any recipe, including the "no-knead" ones, in terms of convenience. I can make better bread with lots of kneading and resting and whatnot, but the bread that comes out is good enough for me, so I don't see myself ever making bread by hand again.
If I lose all my possessions and have to rebuild from scratch, I would buy a cheap multicooker first, then a bread maker. Then, I'd think about a regular stove, a microwave and so on.
Another "optimization" is keeping everything in jars. Flour, coffee, sugar, cocoa, condiments, beans, oats - everything. It's much easier to see what and how much you have of everything, it's transparent, you can put labels on the jars (cheap price tags/stickers), you can pour from the jars easily, you can scoop with them with a spoon. No messy paper or plastic wraps. I don't get why people keep things in their original packaging - a bulky, wrinkled plastic or paper wrap that obscures the view behind it, obscures the view inside and makes it harder to scoop with a spoon.
For jars you use frequently, keep a spoon inside. I have a spoon in my coffee jar. I still have to get another spoon to swirl my coffee when it's done, so the sugar dissolves, but it's nice to not care about that when you're transferring the coffee from the jar to the moka pot or coffee maker.
And finally, keep similar ingredients near each other. The condiments, the teas, the legumes, the flours, the sauces. Just designate a place for each type of food. You can always adjust it later. In my cupboard the sugary condiments (sugar, molasses, xylitol, honey, etc.) are on the left, the salty ones are on the right (various types of salt, as well as salty mixes) and the other ones are in the middle (herbs and whatnot). Above that the most protein-y things are on the left, the cereal-y things are in the middle (oats, various seeds) and misc. things are on the right. The idea is that whenever I buy something, when I come home I immediately pour it into a jar and put it where it belongs. That way everything is pretty and organized. Queries like "how much lentils do I have left" are answered in seconds. The overhead of keeping the jars clean is minimal, as you don't have to clean the jars all the time - if you had a jar of lentils that's now empty, just leave it "dirty". It's not unhygienic, especially if you'll put lentils or other food that you'll boil in it later, anyway. I clean them once they get visible dirty - if I've touched them with greasy fingers, for example.
Since the phrase "home ec" does not seem to appear in the comments yet I will just point out that at least for my generation, doing the dishes efficiently was taught in high schools. Minimizing movements in the kitchen was a subject of instruction.
You only need to remove as many dishes from the dishwasher as you intend to put in.
The water boiling one doesn't make any sense. One of those devices (stove or kettle) transfers more heat per unit of time into the water. Just use that device for the full amount of water.
An induction range would remove the need for transferring boiling water around. At least in the US, that's the fastest device, since countertop kettles are limited to 1.8kW or so. Induction 'burners' usually are 2.5-4kW, and assuming the right cookware, much better at transferring that energy into the water (and not the air like a gas burner)
I had similar thoughts to the author, but I opted to just optimize those actions out of my life. If you only eat Huel(or any other powdered food thing) at home then pretty much everything described in the article is no longer an issue.
No more dealing with dishes, dishwashers, stray items on the table, boiling water etc. The only thing you need to worry about is cleaning your one huel cup which you can do right before you prepare your next shake.
I did it for a few years, eating breakfast + lunch at the office and then Huel for dinner or eating out at restaurant.
By far the biggest boost to my efficiency is using the same stackable containers for prep and storage instead of just random bowls. Even if they don't have measurement marks, just using the same containers all the time lets me measure by sight for ingredients that don't need to be precise. It also allows saving space on counters and in sinks.
Commercial cooks from fast food line cooks to Gordon Ramsay may be rolling their eyes at this basic fact right now, but most cooking shows and videos don't seem to show this strategy.
there are indications that cooking and doing other house related chores are actually beneficial for the mind. Cooking is specially important.
I don't know the reasons as I only read parts of papers and posts about it, but it seems something related to human brain evolution, but I am no expert. If someone knows more I would be happy to know
I'm not sure I understand the thing about boiling water:
1. Put a modest amount of water in the pot and turn the stove element on.
2. Put a modest amount of water in the electric kettle and turn it on.
3. If one boils before the other, either combine them (if the other is nearly boiling) or add a little more water to the already-boiling one.
What happens if they boil at the same time? Don't combine them? What happens if pot boils before kettle? Add water to the pot and forget about the kettle?
And overall boiling water seems to be the worst example to pick to show how to optimize cooking. You can't over-boil water, so depending on your appliance, if you don't start using your boiling water as soon as it boils, it will either stop heating and start loosing temperature, or it will keep boiling, water will be lost through evaporation and energy consumed needlessly. But if your focus is time, then boiling is not an issue. You can do whatever you want during heating. Furthermore, with electric kettle and induction stove, you'll hardly have time to chop a few onions or clean a few carrots before water is ready.
I've seen people needing half to a full hour to make pasta with a store-bought sauce, and thought that was crazy, but that's because they weren't doing things in parallel and/or not in the right order.
Like, if you plan to make pasta, first you put water to boil, then you get your pasta and everything else while its heating. And don't wait for your pasta to be ready to get your strainer. Same for the sauce. Get it and open it while the pasta are cooking.
I'd really like to vectorize-- prep once for, say, 8 or 16 contiguous shots at pan searing the salmon the correct way.
There should be an app that matches home vectorization needs with busy restaurant schedules. So I would pay, say, $50 bucks to jump in the kitchen and get yelled at to properly produce either 16 acceptable salmon entrees or ruin 2, whichever comes first.
From the article: boil water in two different containers then combine it.
Also from the article: "please prioritize safety considerations, such as minimizing the chances of spilling boiling water [...] That stuff matters a lot more than small time savings."
uhm...
Vacuum-sealable containers are pretty great.
Optimize why? So that we can spend the extra seconds on our social media apps? People need to learn to slow down and not try to save twenty seconds when boiling water.
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A few things:
* Garbage bowl: allocate a mixing bowl on the counter to collect garbage and drop cuttings and other refuse in there. Saves you from having to go to the trash bin every time.
* Preheat watery vegetables in the microwave. Things like onions, mushrooms, etc. are mostly water, and you can avoid having to wait for them to reduce in a pan by nuking them for 2 minutes in the microwave first.
* When boiling water or cooking almost anything in a pot, cover it with the lid! It will trap the heat inside the pot and boil/cook faster. So many people don’t use the lid just to save themselves from having to wash it. The only time not to use the lid is if you need to reduce the liquid or allow volatiles to escape.
* Cooking bigger batches of food takes essentially the same amount of time as smaller batches. Make portions big enough that you can get at least two or three more meals from it.
* Learn to use your oven! Too many people get enamored with single use gadgets when the oven already does so many things. People complain that it takes too long to heat up but it really doesn’t.
* Keep your knives sharp: Do NOT use an electric sharpener, just a simple drag over a stone every few months is probably all you need. A sharp knife is SAFER than a dull one.
* Throw away all cutting boards not made of wood or plastic (dump the plastic too if you’re concerned about it). Any cutting board made of glass, marble, metal, or any other hard material is destroying your knives.