On 2021-01-11 8:33 p.m., cshenk wrote:
> Dave Smith wrote:

>> It took me about 20 minutes of prep time to make ratatouille for
>> supper. Once it was left to cook I put on a pot of brown Basmati
>> rice. That will take 39 minutes. I can't count that as kitchen
>> cooking time because I am not in there. Tomorrow or Wednesday I will
>> have another meal or ratatouille.
>
> Same here, I don't count the time not in the kitchen. Making bread is
> a classic. Using a machine, it's 5-10 minutes of my own time depending
> on if I shape it and how before baking. Total though is about 3.5
> hours before it comes out of the oven.
>

I did a turkey dinner for 6 at Christmas. The bird had to cook for 4.5
hours. It took about 15 minutes to prepare the stuffing, let it cool for
15 minutes, then about 5 minutes to stuff and season the bird.

After it went into the oven I peeled some potatoes and trimmed beans and
put them into pots of cold water to be cooked later. That left me
roughly four hours where I had no cooking to do.

When the turkey came out I put the potatoes on to cook and tackled the
gravy and when it was almost ready I put the carrots on and, a few
minutes later, the beans.

Start to finish was about 5 hours, but actual work time was closer to
one hour.


I have made cold smoked salmon several times. There are several steps.
You start by packing the salmon in a mixture of salt and sugar. It sits
for `12 hours. Then it gets rinsed and put into a saturated brine
solution for 12 hours. When it comes out of that it gets rinsed off,
dried, and brushed with sugar and booze, drying between each coat. It
takes about 30 hours, but there is only about 10 minutes of work involved.