Recipe Lies

[stevenpiziks]

I love reading recipes. I love reading the way they lie.

"15-Minute Recipes for a Lazy Supper" boasts one cooking headline I just saw. Lies, lies, lies!

I've never in my life managed to cook a 15-minute recipe in 15 minutes. This is because these recipes always leave out:

--prep time (gathering, washing, chopping, etc.)

--heating time (the time it takes for the stove to heat the pan or for the oven to pre-heat or the pasta water to boil)

--shopping time (because these recipes invariably list ingredients the average person doesn't keep on hand, like pancetta, gyoza, scallops, or sun-dried tomatoes

All these add considerable time to any recipe. The first two will easily triple the time. Add in the fact that cooking a recipe for the first time always goes slower, and a 15-minute recipe easily takes an hour or more.

I just came across a 15-minute recipe for peanut noodles that listed in its ingredients "one pound spaghetti noodles, boiled and cooled." Really? Because I just happen to have a pound of boiled, cooled noodles on hand at all times! A 15-minute recipe for pork fried rice calls for a very hot pan and bunch of cooked rice, both of which take a fair amount of time to prepare. (I know fried rice was invented as a way to use up leftover cooked rice, but this recipe doesn't make note of that, and it's the very last ingredient on the recipe list instead of the first, and needs a "use up that extra rice" note.)

My favorite of these recipes calls for 1 pound of raw shrimp, peeled a deveined (because THAT doesn't take an hour) and 1/2 cup julienned fresh basil (because I keep fresh basil right on hand, and prepping it julienne takes no time at all).

Then this particular headline called the recipes "lazy." Because deveining, julienning, pasta-ing, and rice-making are "lazy" kitchen activities on par with spreading peanut butter on a stale roll.

15 minutes. Lies, lies, lies!