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This is what I made for dinner last night. It’s one of Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals: Chicken Thighs with Apples and Onions over White Cheddar Polenta. And it only took me 70 minutes to make it.
obligatory food porn shot
I am no domestic diva, but I’m a good cook. I can dice and mince and julienne. I can boil stock for polenta and pan-fry chicken at the same time. I even made a turkey and two sides for Thanksgiving that one year before deciding it’s really much better to eat at someone else’s house. But I am incurably optimistic when it comes to recipes. I read one, it sounds yummy, and I decide to make it, mistakenly thinking, “Oh, the listed time is a half hour, I can do that.” Perhaps I should be reminding myself that some professional cook wrote up that recipe, has a perfectly equipped and laid-out kitchen, and probably didn’t include the prep time in the equation. I need to put a sticky note to this effect on my fridge. It can go right next to my magnet that says, “Make your own damn dinner.”
What it comes down to is that I have no hope of cooking anything decent in the amount of time a recipe states. Instead, I usually find myself a third of the way through the steps at the 30-minute mark, cursing silently while my son hangs on my leg telling me that he’s hungry and needs a snack and I do something like spill chicken juice all over the floor while juggling plates on my tiny counter. (Hey, at least last night it was juice from cooked chicken.) This happens to you guys too, right?
The dilemma here is that I don’t want to eat soup from a can or Hamburger Helper. It’s not just that I don’t want to eat it every night, it’s that I don’t want to eat it ever. My days of slurping up Top Ramen embellished with frozen peas and canned tuna are over. I want real food, except for those nights when I only want ice cream, and it’s too expensive to buy the good prepared stuff all the time. I do love Rachael Ray’s recipes, but the only one I ever got through in 30 minutes involved dumping stuff in a crockpot. I just straight up laugh at cookbooks like the Veganomicon, which has a variety of awesome-sounding recipes I’ve never attempted because they take for-fucking-ever. If I had an hour and a half to spend making dinner every night, I’d be doing something more fun with an hour of that time and still scrambling to get it together in the last 30 minutes.
So what I want to know is, where does one find the true 30-minute meals, and/or the motivation to cook dinner every night? These are real, not rhetorical, questions – if any of you knows, please inform me. I’ll be right over here, dreaming the impossible dream of getting a personal chef.
I hear you!! I love to cook as well and don’t have kids but have yet to cook a complete meal in 30 minutes or less. I try to prep everything first so it’s ready to go but somehow it still always takes me longer than I think it should. I have gotten into the habit of making a big meal one night and then eating leftovers from it for the follow two days, then repeat. Then I can just warm up leftovers a couple of nights which helps. And I am a big fan of the crockpot!
Yeah, I need more crock pot recipes, I think. And a kid who will eat leftovers
this is a huge issue for me. i have only the most basic knife skills and few kitchen gadgets (read: not even a mixer) so many steps take me much longer than they otherwise could. the crockpot just barely makes me respectable. i love to cook, but i have a very difficult time making it a priority.
a few months ago i made dinner for a house-full of columbia house residents – i took a day off work so i could do it right.
That was nice of you – I’m sure they appreciated it. I don’t have a ton of gadgets, but I’d get nowhere without my mixer. I admire your fortitude!
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Here’s some tips from an ex-single mom (child all grown up now):
– Substitute cornish game hens for chicken when the recipe calls for bone-in pieces. A game hen cut into quarters will cook in 25 minutes.
– Use couscous in place of rice. All you have to do is pour boiling water over it (4 minutes in the microwave), cover the pan and let it sit for 5 minutes. Plus, my experience is that kids just love this and eat it much more eagerly than rice
– Use the wok. A lot. Anything cut up into smaller pieces and stir fried cooks fast. Throw in some kind of sauce, serve on the couscous (see above) and you have a decent meal in about 30 minutes
– Buy angel hair pasta or orzo. They cook in about 3 minutes, a lot faster than larger, thicker pastas.
– Use the slow cooker. A lot.
– Two words: Frozen pizza.
Thanks for the tips! So far the only one I’ve done regularly is frozen pizza
Stir frys! My $25 wok gets more use than anything else in my kitchen. Throw rice in a rice cooker and then chop up some fresh veggies and throw them in a searing wok. Add whatever spices or flavoring you like and you’re done.
Hmmm, maybe I should pull out the wok more often. Of course, to do that, I’d have to store it somewhere more useful than buried under a pile of stuff in the back of a cabinet in my pantry…