Have you ever used a recipe to cook or bake something? If you have, you probably know exactly where I’m going with this.

But, for the sake of those who either don’t cook or have never needed to use a recipe, I’ll go there anyway. 🙂

In pretty well every “proper” recipe I’ve seen there are two times given: prep time and cooking (or baking) time. Prep is short for preparation, so prep time is, you guessed it, the time it takes to prepare the ingredients for the recipe: taking them out, cutting, chopping, peeling, measuring, etc. The cooking (or baking) time is – wait for it! – the time it takes to actually cook or bake the thing! Ta daaaaaaaaaaa!! Not rocket science.

For some reason, though, the people who write recipes seem to think that we all have sous-chefs at home who do all of said cutting, chopping, peeling and measuring. Then when we walk into the kitchen to make a recipe, everything is laid out in those cute little bowls (like on the cooking shows), all ready to go.

I’ve noticed this phenomenon often over the years. But it really stood out for me somewhere in the past several months when I was intentionally looking for some quick recipes for weeknight suppers. I have a bunch from years ago where you open cans of things and throw in some meat or veggies to create an easy one-pot meal. (Ahhhhh…the days of the cream of chicken soup casserole!!) But I wanted some healthier options that didn’t use a bunch of prepared foods.

So, as I am wont to do, I hopped on the ol’ Google machine. As you can imagine, there were a lot of results. And they sounded ideal: “Healthy dinner recipes ready in 30 minutes!” YES!!!!! That’s it!

Then I read the recipe: Take out X Y Z vegetables. Peel them. Dice them. Put them in the food processor. Make a sauce. Get out this other stuff and measure it. Slice the meat into thin strips. Hop around the kitchen blindfolded, on one foot. OK…I may be exaggerating on that last bit, but you get the point. 😉

Joking aside, I have actually seen a recipe with most of those steps and a listed prep time of FIVE minutes!!WHAT??

Some recipes kind of cheat, too, and include a pre-cooked ingredient just so they can say it’s a really fast recipe. So always read the recipe! (Especially keep an eye out for when something needs to be marinated. You might actually need to start your prep a couple of hours earlier or possibly the day before.)

Even in baking, which I’m more comfortable with than cooking, I find it impossible to achieve the listed prep time.

It might be possible if I treated it like a race, but if I hurry, I make mistakes and drop things – or even forget things. (Ever made banana bread without the baking powder? Good fun.) Plus, I want to enjoy it, not feel like a clock is ticking. I don’t go intentionally slow, either. And my kitchen isn’t huge. Everything is within easy reach – no more than 4 or 5 steps away. Really, if prep times were going to work for any regular person, it should be me.

Sadly, they don’t, so I don’t trust them at all anymore. I scan the recipe to see what’s involved and, at a minimum, double the prep time to help me decide if it’s something I want to take on in the time I actually have.

If you are fairly new to cooking or baking, or if it’s a completely new type of recipe to you, I would suggest even starting with tripling the prep time. Or maybe even totally disregarding it. Give yourself a comfortable spread of time so you don’t feel that ticking clock or, worse, a sense of failure or incompetence that might deter you from trying again in the future.

Cuz, seriously, it ain’t you. It ain’t me, either. It’s the recipe.

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe!