Convenience cooking is the practice of streamlining recipes for simplicity and speed of preparation. It is a common practice in

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s, where both men and women work outside the home and elaborate meals are difficult if not impossible to pull off given the time constraints. Though seemingly a recent phenomenon, guides to convenience cooking go as far back as 1930 '' French Cooking in Ten Minutes'' by Edouard de Pomiane, which tried to minimize the time put into much French cooking of the day. Current well-known practitioners of the art include

Rachael Ray Rachael Domenica Ray (born August 25, 1968) is an American cook, television personality, businesswoman, and author. She hosts the syndicated daily talk and lifestyle program '' Rachael Ray'', and the Food Network series ''30 Minute Meals'' ...

and Sandra Lee; in addition, ''

Cook's Illustrated ''Cook's Illustrated'' is an American cooking magazine published every two months by the America's Test Kitchen company in Brookline, Massachusetts. It accepts no advertising and is characterized by extensive recipe testing and detailed instruct ...

'' magazine has often incorporated convenience-cooking principles into their recipes.

Ingredient simplification

A significant amount of convenience cooking revolves around simplifying recipes to five or fewer ingredients. There is a substantial genre of cookbooks devoted to such dishes, often, though not always using other prepared foods as ingredients. In this division, "ingredients" generally does not include such things as

spice A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spice ...

s and water.

Time economy

Another important skill in convenience cooking is

time management Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves of various demands upon a person relating to work, ...

. This genre of cooking focuses largely on process and technique rather than ingredients, and is aimed at getting the best quality out of a quickly prepared meal as possible, especially using common kitchen tools rather than specialized equipment such as

convection oven A convection oven (also known as a fan-assisted oven or simply a fan oven) is an oven that has fans to circulate air around food to create an evenly heated environment. The increased air circulation causes a fan-assisted oven to cook food fast ...

s and

microwave oven A microwave oven (commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce ...

s. Some recipes remove certain steps that take large amounts of time. Sometimes kneading

dough Dough is a thick, malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops. Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavenin ...

is removed from the process of making bread because it requires large amounts of time and effort. There are machines like Rotimatic available in market which makes Rotis, Puris, etc from the flour in just few minutes. A common adjunct to this school of food preparation is the

slow cooker A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot (after a trademark owned by Sunbeam Products but sometimes used generically in the English-speaking world), is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than o ...

, which allows unattended preparation of braises, soups, and stews.

References

{{fast culture Cooking

Ingredient simplification

Time economy

See also

References