Recipe Fraud
By patgalca
@patgalca (18481)
Orangeville, Ontario
March 16, 2016 9:59pm CST
Do you ever follow those cooking recipes where it tells you the prep time and the cooking time? Have you noticed that when they say prep time 10 minutes they aren't including ALL the preparations? It takes 10 minutes to put all the ingredients together but it takes a heck of a lot longer to peel and cut veggies, maybe pre-cook the meat or pasta.
Why do these recipe authors not include the full prep time? I hate trying to make a meal to be ready at a certain time and not having an accurate prep time. I usually have to give myself at least a half an hour of prep time depending on what I'm making.
7 people like this
8 responses
@OKennedy (1130)
• United States
17 Mar 16
i suppose that depends if someone is a pro then chopping the veggies might take them only two minutes to dice it all up where someone like us might take twice as long. They also probably do things to save time like put the water for pasta to boil while they chop veggies. Look at Rachael Ray she makes a meal in 30 minutes
1 person likes this
@OKennedy (1130)
• United States
18 Mar 16
@patgalca I have had that happen to me. To avoid that happening I guess time for everything IE:meat 20 minutes cook time and potatoes 1 hour and veggies ten minutes so I put potatoes first prepare the meat and put it to cook when about 30 minutes have passed so that the meat and potatoes cook within minutes of one another and the last few minutes before everything is done put the veggies to cook while plating.
1 person likes this
@patgalca (18481)
• Orangeville, Ontario
17 Mar 16
I love making shepherd's pie and my family loves it but there is a lot of prep involved (peel, cut, boil and mash potatoes, peel and cut onion, peel and chop carrots, and we like it topped with cheese so shredding cheese also adds to the prep time).
1 person likes this
@thesids (22180)
• Bhubaneswar, India
17 Mar 16
On the cookery episodes that I watched on Tele at dad's place, the chef, on one, did mention the things to be done before the final preparation. I could understand him because on Tele, it is normally a 20 odd minutes show and they need to have at least 3 dishes aired on one single episode.
But when it comes to websites on the internet (or even in printed books), and they do not mention the exact duration it makes things difficult.
I believe, in order to have an eatable meal ready, i would take at least an hour for a dish. Maybe because I am from India and our cooking methods need many more ingredients but even for some of the western food that I cook, I would need at least 40 minutes.
Dicing and Peeling are the major segments of cooking that are time consuming unless you have that expertise as the chefs or the right tools.
1 person likes this
@patgalca (18481)
• Orangeville, Ontario
17 Mar 16
Pretty soon they're going to have to add clean-up time. If people are cutting prep time by using machines like electric peelers and choppers, they have to in turn wash those items (I wouldn't put them in the dishwasher) as well as all the pots and pans.
1 person likes this
@1creekgirl (44560)
• United States
17 Mar 16
I get recipes from Allrecipes.com and they're usually fairly accurate. I learned my lesson though, one time I used an apple pie recipe from an online blogger and it was awful! I don't remember the details, but several things were wrong. 
1 person likes this
@1creekgirl (44560)
• United States
18 Mar 16
@patgalca Thanks, I'll have to check out the Kraft What's Cooking.
@Letranknight2015 (52665)
• Philippines
17 Mar 16
I don't watch them much, sometimes but depends if i like it or not. If it's in the tv show I think they would make something that is already made, then they just show the ingredients to be prepared. but there are some shows were they prepared the whole thing.
