The Prep Time

How is your Christmas season looking? Are you planning office parties, family and friend events; baking and more baking. This year I won’t be doing quite as much baking as I have a severely torn rotator cuff, that is preventing me from doing a lot of activities that I enjoy. Even typing on my computer is hard – I have to take a break every 10 minutes or so. I can’t wait to get the surgery done.

Why did I choose “prep time” as my topic today?

The main reason is I google a lot of recipes and the majority of these recipes always have prep time and cook time listed on them. I know that cooking and cook off shows are very popular on television, and they compete to see how fast they can prepare a dish. Well, my kitchen is not a NASCAR speedway kitchen, I prefer to enjoy what I am preparing for a meal, dessert, or snack, and perhaps a glass of wine in hand.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to make ginger beef. I searched on the internet and found a recipe that wasn’t too difficult; and I had all of the ingredients required to make this dish. Prep Time: 15 minutes and Cook Time: 15 minutes. Great. It was later Sunday afternoon – 5 pm to be exact. We should be eating by 5:30 according to this recipe. Easy peezy. Yeah, right. Not sure where this dude keeps his watch, but it can’t be in front of himself.

Just to prepare the beef this is what was involved.

§ Slice one pound of beef (sirloin steak) thinly sliced. Now because this is a task that is hard for me to do with my sore shoulder, I asked my husband to do this instead. I am thinking it took him about 10 minutes. This leaves me 5 minutes to do the rest of the prepping.

§ Next finely chop a large white onion, julienne 1½ cups of carrots, mince 3 cloves of garlic, grate 1 tablespoon of ginger, and ¼ cup green onions (thinly sliced)

§ Measure out cornstarch, sesame oil, black pepper, brown sugar, and sesame seeds

§ And … heat oil up in a fry pan to deep fry the pieces of beef

The above points were supposed to take me 5 minutes. You would have to be someone like Edward Scissorhands – who has scissor blades for hands vs fingers like us. Just to deep fry the 40-50 strips of beef, which had to be shook in cornstarch first, took me I am guessing around 15-20 minutes. Heating the oil took 7 minutes, which was heating while I prepared the beef. As you can tell I am way over the 15 minutes of prep time.

By the time we sat down for supper, basically 2 hours had passed and like I had mentioned my husband prepared the beef.

The actual cooking time took about 15 minutes once you had the beef ready to go into the hot oil. You could do several pieces of the coated beef at a time, then lay on a paper towel until all of the pieces had been cooked 3-4 minutes each. Next was to add the vegetables and let them cook and then simmer in the sauce for a few minutes along with the deep fried strips of ginger beef. It was a good thing we weren’t starving or in a hurry to eat supper that night.

I find the prep time for a lot of recipes is totally off. I don’t know who these chefs are that create these imaginary prep times, but they live in a different world than I do.

I tackled a new recipe yesterday for some Blueberry Muffins. Same thing. Prep Time: 15 minutes. Baking Time: 20-25 minutes. Both times were off again. The prep time was more like 35-40 minutes. Cooking time was about 18 minutes, but all ovens bake differently, so cooking time is usually off. Anytime you are baking something for the first time, keep your eyes on it and monitor the time the recipe suggests. It will usually be out. This is when I make my own notes on the recipe and what I did that worked. I will correct the prep time as well as the cooking time.

And I don’t mind having to take more time to prepare food, I just wish they could get the times a bit more accurate at least. For myself, I usually read through the recipe first and I can instantly tell myself this prep time is completely off the wall. But for a junior cook, who really doesn’t know how long it takes to chop, cut, measure, and prepare food to cook, they are in for a surprise. Why not give a real picture of the amount of prep time? I would like to meet these people and see them prepare these recipes in 15 minutes like their recipes suggest.

A couple of blogs ago I spoke about the new recipe app I found called Recipe Keeper. It has a place to make notes, often change the prep time (depending on where you got the recipe from). The “Notes” section comes in very handy to remind yourself what was good / bad about the recipe. And whether you will make it again or just delete it.

If you were planning on making 4-5 different cookie recipes in an afternoon of baking and the prep times all said 15 minutes, only to find out the majority were 30 minutes. Your 4-5 recipes may end up being 2 or 3 recipes of cookies. Time is a factor, and it should be accurate when looking at a recipe. Or at least in this one girl’s opinion I sure think it should be.

And while I am on the topic of time. I love searching for recipes on the internet, but the most annoying thing is when you can’t actually get to the recipe without scrolling for 5 minutes because of all the ads they have on their page. And yes, I realize this is how people make money, but some sites are ridiculous to say the least. And every time you sign up with your email you get an email a day from them, which you really don’t want either. Sometimes you just have to resort to the old-fashioned way and look through your cookbooks. And I love looking at cookbooks – it just takes a lot more time.

Enjoy the month of December, try not to get too stressed out and hopefully enjoy various events that go on in your community.

Now for a song. I had to contemplate on this one for awhile. My blog isn’t really about Christmas; therefore, I didn’t want to use a Christmas song. I was busy baking in the kitchen when this song came up randomly on my music I was streaming. My toes were tapping instantly and pretty soon I was dancing around the kitchen, having a gay old time with myself – singing away loudly with the music. (I was alone in the house!) The song is “Swing The Mood by Jive Bunny and The MasterMixers”. It is a medley of In The Mood, Rock Around the Clock Tonight, Wake Up Little, Susie, Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog, Shake, Rattle and Roll, and others. If you love Jive music, when you play this medley I hope your toes are tapping too.

Enjoy this month of December and the closing of another year. Where did 2023 go we are asking ourselves? Take care, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (in case I don’t get another blog written in 2023).

Merle Lee Ann Pratt – merleleeannskitchen.com – Email: merleleeann@gmail.com

This column is sponsored by MacKenzie Funeral Chapel and Crematorium – We will be there when you need us – Bev and Brian Stobbs

130 9th St. E, Prince Albert, SK

Phone: (306) 763-8488

https://mackenziechapel.ca/

by Merle Lee Ann Pratt – Merle Lee Ann’s Kitchen, author of “A Baker’s Dozen”

The Prep Time

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