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

Western culture Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the Cultural heritage, internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompas ...

s, where both men and women work outside the home and elaborate meals are difficult if not impossible to prepare 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 hosted the syndicated daily talk and lifestyle program '' Rachael Ray''. Other programs to her credit include ''30 Minut ...

and Sandra Lee; in addition, '' Cook's Illustrated'' 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 In the culinary arts, a spice is any seed, fruit, root, Bark (botany), bark, or other plant substance in a form primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of pl ...

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. Time management involves demands relating to work, social ...

. 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 ovens and

microwave oven A microwave oven, or simply microwave, is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces Dipole#Molecular dipoles, polar molecules in the food to rotate and ...

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

kneading In cooking (and more specifically baking), kneading is a process in the making of bread or dough, used to mix the ingredients and add strength to the final product. It allows the process of baking to be shortened by developing the gluten more qu ...

dough Dough is a malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from flour (which itself is 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 ...

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 ...

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

References

{{fast culture Cooking

Ingredient simplification

Time economy

See also

References