How to Simplify Cooking for the Culinary Averse: A Quick Guide You Can Start Tonight
Do you find yourself constantly touching your iPhone while cooking? Each time, you have to unlock the screen. Even after unlocking, you need to scroll to the desired spot… Sometimes, you accidentally select a photo, and it gets enlarged… Meanwhile, the food in the frying pan starts to burn.
Have you ever experienced this? I certainly have.
My goal in cooking is to “eat the minimum necessary nutrients in a reasonably tasty way.”
I’m not good at cooking, nor do I enjoy it.
Therefore, I don’t make dishes with complicated steps. Moreover, I want to finish cooking in the shortest time possible while achieving my goal.
Hence, productivity is key.
There are countless tools and methods to increase productivity, one of mine is “writing down the recipe on paper just before cooking and sticking it on the refrigerator.” With just a small piece of paper and a pencil, you can start this simple method tonight.
Today, I’ll talk about this method and its benefits.
Method – Cheatsheet on the Fridge
Assuming you have all the ingredients for the recipe you want to make:
| 1 | When you find a recipe on social media or a website, first write down the ingredients. |
| 2 | Recalculate the quantities of each ingredient to the amount you want to make. If necessary, convert the units (I prefer using “gram”/”ml”, so I research and convert “lb” / “cup” in advance). |
| 3 | Check the steps and write down the flow on paper. I use arrows and numbers. (if that makes it easier for you to understand faster) |
| 4 | (After the meal) If you want to make the same dish again, keep it. If not, throw it away. |
Here are some of my papers on the fridge
Benefits of Paper
- Quick Reference: Since it’s stuck on the refrigerator door, you can check it with just a few steps, even if your hands are full.
- Easy to Understand: It’s illustrated, making it easier to understand. Depending on the type of dish, the ingredients’ state on the pot/pan can change in minutes, seconds, or units, so it’s faster to understand than a written recipe.
- No On-the-Fly Customization: Since the necessary amounts are calculated and written down in advance, there’s no need to calculate during cooking.
- Familiar Units: The units are converted to ones you’re familiar with, so there’s no need to calculate during cooking.
- Easy to Dispose: If you don’t want to make it again, you can just throw it away, so recipes don’t pile up. You won’t have trouble finding recipes, and only the ones you really like will remain.
- More Hygienic Than Digital Devices: During cooking, you touch various things like salmonella, oil, and moisture, making it very unhygienic to touch digital devices. In comparison, since the paper is stuck on the refrigerator, you can keep both paper and your devices clean.
Conclusion
Using paper increases productivity when cooking. It does take some preparation, but it’s nothing compared to the stress of constantly looking at your phone or calculating quantities in your head while cooking.
Give it a try!
Resources
You can check other contents for your productivity & Time management.
