There’s a big difference between my post-cook mess and my partner’s.
I clean as I go; not even a hassle. They leave it all to the end; monumental post-meal dread.
A lot of it depends on the recipe. Dishes like Japanese cream stew or beef bourguignon have lots of prep but end with slow-cooking in a single pan, so you have plenty of time to clean before dinner is served.
Compared to something like, I dunno, steak with scratch-made bernaise sauce and buttered kale - it all comes together at the end very quickly, so you’ll have pans and measuring jugs and ingredients on the counter right until the moment you plate-up. No time to clean as you go.
I often choose what to cook purely on the basis of how much mess there will be at the end, because I hate clean-up!
I completely agree. I’m a clean-as-you-go type guy, but sometimes you still end up with a mess, especially if the meal has multiple components that come together at end.
Sounds like you need to improve your mise en place.
I will always do the cold prep first, then wash and tidy away everything I can before starting to cook.
But having organised prep before you start cooking isn’t necessarily going to lead to zero mess after.
The recipe I chose as an example was specifically because it’s one which makes life difficult. The bernaise sauce in particular wants to be served when it’s freshly made and hot. So you’d cook the steak, and while the steak is resting you cook the sauce.
The sauce requires combining eggs and hot melted butter in a blender and blasting it until emulsified, and then after that adding the fresh tarragon you prepped earlier. Then you serve immediately.
So no matter how much mise-en-place you did, at the end you’ve still got at least a dirty steak pan, butter pan, kale pan, blender, dish for the tarragon, measuring jug, and various utensils…
And oh - the measuring jug was not used for measuring, but rather to transfer the hot butter from the pan to the blender.
If you found a way to avoid all that then great, you’re doing very well indeed.
The bernaise sauce in particular wants to be served when it’s freshly made and hot
Who cares what it wants. You’re the chef, you take charge.
Skip the blender and make bearnaise the classic way, wilt the kale in the steak pan while it’s resting and give it a quick toss before serving. Two pans, two bowls, a small dish for the tarragon, a whisk and a pair of tongs. Put a bit a water in the hot pans while you eat to soften anything left in them. An immersion blender is a good compromise for sauces like this too, I find them easier to clean than a pitcher. Either way it should take no more than five minutes to tidy up after. (You can also make the bearnaise first and hold it in a warm oven, it’ll be fine)
I actually toyed with the idea of making a YouTube channel dedicated to recreating food from other channels and only showing the clean-up. Like “thanks for the tip Babish now I get to scrape off sticky eldritch bullshit from a ridiculously tiny whisk AGAIN” and “we’re going to soak these plates for at least an hour because we fell asleep as soon as the guests left and the sauce hardened into concrete”.
Any YouTube money would’ve gone into a dishwasher fund. I would’ve reviewed the dishwasher after buying it and that would’ve been the last video on the channel.
I’d watch that religiously.
DO THAT
This is the kind of idea that works and actually makes your chanel relatively popular.
Throw in effective cleaning tips for the worst stuck-on crud, and I’m there. Acids, abrasives, bleach, ammonia, detergents, brillo, scotch-brite, magic erasers, scrapers, heat, cold1, steam… they all have their place but a lot of people aren’t aware of the best tool for the job. Plus there’s already people watching power washing, lawn mowing, and snow removal on youtube - the audience is already there for a clean sink.
I would’ve reviewed the dishwasher after buying it and that would’ve been the last video on the channel.
That’s begging for a collab with Technology Connections.
1 - throw bacon grease into a ceramic coffee mug and refrigerate; other materials may not handle the temperature shock and break. After it’s set it’s easily used as a cooking fat. Also, it’s now solid enough to sit in the kitchen garbage without leaking everywhere.
I’d watch it
last video on the channel
Why kill a perfectly good cash cow?
I mean, there’s only so many ways to do dishes in an entertaining fashion lol
Some people just enjoy watching messes disappear. That’s the entertainment.
I’m sure you can figure something out. One can always take the Casually Explained release cycle for videos.
If they can write a 7 paragraph story about their dying grandmas old family recipes, they can show us the mess.
Lukewarm take: if you don’t make some effort to clean up to have less of a mess while you cook, you’re not competent enough to be in the kitchen.
~Just my opinion; don’t burn me at the stake.~
Agreed, came here to say this. Clean as you cook. Not always super easy or possible, but if you’re waiting for something to finish/warm up/cool down/whatever, you can probably wash a cutting board or some spoons or something
Or do what I do and wash things as you cook only to realize that you’re going to need the thing you washed to finish whatever you’re making. You get to do 3x the cleaning per 1x cooking.
This is easily avoided by doing a tiny bit of thinking with a pinch of foresight.
I am not a smart person.
Yup, this and fill the sink up with hot water feeling all smug to then realise I didn’t rinse the rice.
It’s really just an amortization or, perhaps, an atomization of effort; sadly many don’t really value the benefits of that behavior.
You have to spend time in the kitchen to develop competence.
Very true, but I submit that the wisdom of “clean as you cook” is obvious on day 2.
Well…you’re not wrong, but it’s not like we get a choice at the end of the day.
People lucky enough to not need a kitchen are few and far between.
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
I’m sure it’s respone to this take
you’re not competent enough to be in the kitchen.
A lot of people are not in the kitchen for passion or profession, but for necessity so it’s only natural you’ll get sentiments similar to the OP.
That’s why baking wins every time
When my partner bakes, there’s fucking flour everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I’d rather have post meal mess.
By baking, I simply mean I of in the cold food of out hot eat the food, not the entire process before it.
For example, bake pork chop. Put tinfoil on the tray, put the pork chop on, add some salt, put another tinfoil to cover it. You don’t even need to wash the tray.
Cook some rice with a rice cooker to go with the pork chop and you’re done.
Jon with the wisdom and a 1st-class dumper.
Clean as you go… i should follow what I preach… but its hard
with new recipes it’s not always clear because you’re not sure what you need to reuse or the timing …
I’ve been leaning heavily on my dishwasher in the past year. It’s been such a relief.
Even just taking the time to run some hot water over the dishes youre throwing in the sink as youre throwing them in the sink will help. You dont need to wash them, just get the concrete sauce off the plate while its still wet before its had 3 hours to turn into superglue that requires one to get a putty knife from the garage to remove lol
Slow cookers have entered the chat.
90% of slow cooker recipes:
-
Ingredients
-
Put in slow cooker
-
Cook for 4-8 hours
-
Eat for a week
Clean out the slow cooker crock and maybe a cutting board. God-tier appliance and cooking method.
Agreed. The real slow-cooker superpower is where it cooks dinner for you while you’re away at work, letting you come home to a hot meal.
I use my slow cooker here and there for convenience, but I feel like no matter what I put in it, it just tastes like slow cooker. Not that it’s bad, but strangely similar even when I use completely different ingredients.
Instant pot does this but in 30 minutes tops.
Except you can’t have raw meat sitting for 7 hours until an insta pot turns on 1hr before you get home.
Most of them also have a slow cook feature as well.
I love throwing food into a slow cooker, doing something else, and then tada! Food! The best.
-
What mess? Never heard about cleaning your station while cooking? There is more than enough time to put things away and dishes in the dishwasher while dinner is cooking. Knifes are cleaned immediately after use. No mess.
When am I going to find time to clean while cooking? I’m too busy cooking!
Try doing your prep first, clean up the mess you made, and then start the actual cooking process. Usually, prepping makes the most mess.
A ha ha ha ha ha hah.
For some things you do have to multitask and keep the plates spinning, so to speak. For example making sure something doesn’t burn while you’re cleaning the last mess.
And that is something that a lot of people need to acclimate to I think. If anyone reading this is one of those people then I’d suggest focusing on reducing the mess as much as possible while you’re cooking, even if you aren’t perfect. Then try to take care of whatever’s left after you finish cooking but before you actually eat. One or two dirty implements is a lot less daunting to take care of than a sink full of stuff.
Another thing I’d suggest is trying to reduce the amount of stuff you dirty in the first place by focusing on single pot recipes or modifying a recipe to be single pot. Frying meat and onions in the bottom of a soup pot before deglazing and adding the rest of the ingredients, for example. This isn’t always possible to do of course, especially if you’re doing something big and fancy, but you should save those kinds of recipes for times when you have all day to dedicate to them.
Depends on how many things you are making at the same time and the volume of mess.per item.
Cleaning as you go is the best, but sometimes you can’t stop stirring or chopping or peeling to do it.
Do all your prep first.
Sometimes there isn’t time to prep before starting, or room to do all the prep, or a ton of other reasons for not doing all the prep ahead of time. Sometimes prepping the other thing you are making while the first thing is cooking is the better use of time. Cleaning isn’t always the best use of time.
That’s why I said depends.
Within the context of the original post: if what you’re cooking leaves a huge mess and this is a significant enough problem to complain on the internet about it there was a failure of preparation at several points.
Some things involve multiple utentils and dishes at the end of the process and there is no amount of preparation that avoids needing to clean multiple things at the end. Like making a cake will have the same amount of dishes when you put it in the oven, more if you do additional prep in small bowls ahead of time.
They are really just complaining about the amount of things to clean and the mess that some stuff makes as part of the process.
Of course, when you are doing a stir-fry you cannot clean while cooking. But you can clean up your station between prep and actual cooking.
This is the way.
This is why we have mise-en-place.
Isn’t that the opposite? Makes it easier to get the timing right, but at the cost of dirtying loads more little bowls? Whereas if i dice my carrots while my onions are sweating etc, I can keep the production line going and only use one pot…
Depends on how you look at it, I guess. Assuming you have a dishwasher, you can just put the containers in there as you use ingredients and be left with a clean counter. Definitely a trade-off involved, though!
I mean how dirty do you think the bowls get from having some chopped carrots in it, all it takes is a quick rinse with water to clean the bowl, the plus side is you don’t have to work about quickly chopping something so that the stuff in the pan doesn’t overcook or burn, which is a issue I used to have, I’d much rather pre chop everything that I can
at the cost of dirtying loads more little bowls
Little bowls are very easy to clean, especially if they just have something like chopped veggies in them.
If you dice your carrots while your onions are sweating, you don’t have time to throw the onion skins etc. in the garbage, or to put any unused onion in the fridge, etc. So, the mess just keeps expanding with each ingredient. And, the worst part is that as soon as you’re done, you want to serve the meal while it’s hot, so all the mess stays out on the counter until after dinner.
If you’re doing everything in one pot, that doesn’t matter too much because you only have one difficult thing to clean, the pot. But, if you’re making a meal with multiple pots and pans, and they’re all sitting dirty while you’re eating, it’s much more of a pain to clean them up after dinner. If you prep everything in advance, you might have a chance to give the pasta pot a rinse while the stuff in the frying pan needs a couple more minutes.
Bowls are the easiest thing to clean.
CAYG
Clean As You Go
One of the things I consider when choosing a new recipe is how many different pots and bowls are involved, and how many things have to come together at the end; I like to minimize them to keep the amount of work and cleaning low. My wife has a knack for choosing ones that maximize those things, and there’s always so much more to do. I love a one-pot meal.
This is why the one who does the cooking should do the dishes.
When I am done cooking?
The only dishes are the plates we eat off of, and the utensils.
It is not difficult to clean as you go .
My wife somehow uses every single pot, pan, cutting board, and cooking utensil we own. Like good damn it was just a grilled cheese. What happened
We have the opposite rule. I’d someone cook they are not on the hook for any cleaning. Obviously, you should be cleaning some stuff as you go, but if you make the effort to cook something more special, you shouldn’t be punished for it with more chores.
this is okay until you have a partner that cooks every single thing in the house in a manic state over the course of a day and expects you to clean up the aftermath.
if ever i acquire another partner in the future who feels the need to do much cooking, they can clean up afterwards!
For many people, who dont like cooking, having a partner that is happy to cook something special for them every day is heaven.
So the rule should be that whoever cooks also cleans everything that can be cleaned before serving. The other person cleans up after you’re done eating.
I personally find that cleaning up afterwards is much harder even if there are fewer dishes, so it feels like a fair deal.
For real—add a cleanup difficulty rating next to the recipe 😂
Recipes should actually be tested before being published.
Half of them I get half way through and realize that it’s half backwards or uses twice as many dishes or utensils than it needs to.
one of the main reasons why I hate cooking :P
