Cleaning as you go is the secret to making cooking fun, more or less.
I’m trying to teach my son this concept. He loves to cook, but he just dumps everything in the sink as he cooks, uses a new utensil for everything, etc. You don’t need a new spoon every time you taste your spaghetti sauce.
It’s even more fun to cook when you know a parent is going to clean up the mess after your Iron Chef fantasy.
If you find a way to teach this lesson let me know.
My wife loves to cook and is very good at it, but she’s purely focused on the food. I try to clean as she goes behind her and she keeps shooing me away because I’m in way. However if I don’t then she’ll start getting annoyed that the sink is full. It’s a delicate balance
I used to despise washing dishes. Then I opened a food biz, and spent many hours washing dishes and listening to audio books.
Now I don’t mind washing dishes. There’s something very satisfying about tackling a pile of dirty dishes and having them all shiny and clean at the end. It’s very Zen.
It helps that with great experience comes great speed. When others look at a destroyed kitchen and see hours of drudgery, I know that it will be beautiful in 15 minutes.
ive worked food service and wish i could say the same. I’d be all over dishes of i had at least a full power overhead sprayer. preferably with a 3 compartment sink but what i really want is the sprayer. the sprayer makes dishes fun.
Yeah, a full three compartment sink set up is great. One of my lottery purchases when I hit the big one, will be a house with a professional kitchen in it, with a serious dishwashing bay in it.
I really love those commercial dishwashers that have a 90-120 second cycle.
Growing up, the fine China was always hand washed.
Not that we were a China kind of family, but we had a relative that worked in a big China factory, and she would give every new couple a full set of China as a wedding gift. Now they’ve all been passed down, and we’ve got about six full sets of amazing China we don’t know what to do with. We don’t even bother with it on Thanksgiving and Christmas anymore.
Podcasts are also marvelous for this. Washing dishes is tedious, until your hands are going on their own in a pleasant way and I’m listening to “Revolutions” or “Mall Brats”.
Better heat and process management. If I have 2 minutes to toast almonds, I won’t be scrubbing a pan. But, if I have to cut veg and then saute, I’ll do all my prep and then start cleaning between stirs/pan heating.
Also, I love getting all my prep out of the way and then starting cooking. I immediately have much better process management to clean between cooking activities
I have done this. But when I cook my wife really loves the smell and starts getting hangry. Think it makes me rush it.
Its even worse with a toddler now lol.
I can do what you’re describing but I’ll realize I could have been cooking something for the 20 minutes I was doing prep for the next part. Can’t get the stages down well enough unless it’s something I’ve cooked a lot of times.
I trained myself to wash as I cook because otherwise I’ll get distracted and leave the mess behind for days.
Cleaning as you go is the secret to making cooking fun, more or less.
I’m trying to teach my son this concept. He loves to cook, but he just dumps everything in the sink as he cooks, uses a new utensil for everything, etc. You don’t need a new spoon every time you taste your spaghetti sauce.
It’s even more fun to cook when you know a parent is going to clean up the mess after your Iron Chef fantasy.
If you find a way to teach this lesson let me know.
My wife loves to cook and is very good at it, but she’s purely focused on the food. I try to clean as she goes behind her and she keeps shooing me away because I’m in way. However if I don’t then she’ll start getting annoyed that the sink is full. It’s a delicate balance
I used to despise washing dishes. Then I opened a food biz, and spent many hours washing dishes and listening to audio books.
Now I don’t mind washing dishes. There’s something very satisfying about tackling a pile of dirty dishes and having them all shiny and clean at the end. It’s very Zen.
It helps that with great experience comes great speed. When others look at a destroyed kitchen and see hours of drudgery, I know that it will be beautiful in 15 minutes.
ive worked food service and wish i could say the same. I’d be all over dishes of i had at least a full power overhead sprayer. preferably with a 3 compartment sink but what i really want is the sprayer. the sprayer makes dishes fun.
Yeah, a full three compartment sink set up is great. One of my lottery purchases when I hit the big one, will be a house with a professional kitchen in it, with a serious dishwashing bay in it.
I really love those commercial dishwashers that have a 90-120 second cycle.
dont forget commercial cookware to go along with it.
your mother-in-law’s fine china definitely won’t like a commercial dishwasher that’s for sure
Growing up, the fine China was always hand washed.
Not that we were a China kind of family, but we had a relative that worked in a big China factory, and she would give every new couple a full set of China as a wedding gift. Now they’ve all been passed down, and we’ve got about six full sets of amazing China we don’t know what to do with. We don’t even bother with it on Thanksgiving and Christmas anymore.
Your new book title is: Zen and the art of dishwashing.
/s
I would buy that.
Podcasts are also marvelous for this. Washing dishes is tedious, until your hands are going on their own in a pleasant way and I’m listening to “Revolutions” or “Mall Brats”.
How do you do this without burning the food?
Better heat and process management. If I have 2 minutes to toast almonds, I won’t be scrubbing a pan. But, if I have to cut veg and then saute, I’ll do all my prep and then start cleaning between stirs/pan heating.
Also, I love getting all my prep out of the way and then starting cooking. I immediately have much better process management to clean between cooking activities
I have done this. But when I cook my wife really loves the smell and starts getting hangry. Think it makes me rush it.
Its even worse with a toddler now lol.
I can do what you’re describing but I’ll realize I could have been cooking something for the 20 minutes I was doing prep for the next part. Can’t get the stages down well enough unless it’s something I’ve cooked a lot of times.
I’ve also found rinsing the dish/item if I’m in a rush between steps helps massively when I’m cleaning as I go too.
Ain’t no fixing the rush feeling though lol