“cuisine of the week”, learn to prepare meals from around the world
replaced teflon cookware with cast iron, stainless and carbon steel, and learned to use them
got a steel griddle top covering my entire stove and learned to play short order cook. Played a little hibachi chef but made too much mess trying to twirl and flip things
got a smoker
This weekend I have a 10 lb pork shoulder to smoke. Easily pulled pork for the week and unless my kids come home from school, I’ll likely freeze a bunch
Bread is probably the least time consuming thing on that list though. There’s a whole slew of no-knead recipes out there, and it takes about 5 minutes to measure out and mix together the ingredients. After that it’s just waiting for it to rise, another 5 minutes to shape the loaf, proof it, toss it in the oven and wait till it’s done. For 10 minutes of active prep time, you can have a nice loaf of crusty white bread that’s nearly as good as something you’d find in some bougie bakery. Granted it takes a couple seconds of pre-planning since the rise/proofing times are long, but most basic no-knead recipes are super forgiving on that, and if something comes up before you’re able to bake it, you can toss your uncooked dough into the fridge for short term storage, or freeze it for long term.
Then you realize cooking can be a hobby!
Since COViD, I
This weekend I have a 10 lb pork shoulder to smoke. Easily pulled pork for the week and unless my kids come home from school, I’ll likely freeze a bunch
I stopped reading at “make bread”. Waaay too little free time for that
Bread is probably the least time consuming thing on that list though. There’s a whole slew of no-knead recipes out there, and it takes about 5 minutes to measure out and mix together the ingredients. After that it’s just waiting for it to rise, another 5 minutes to shape the loaf, proof it, toss it in the oven and wait till it’s done. For 10 minutes of active prep time, you can have a nice loaf of crusty white bread that’s nearly as good as something you’d find in some bougie bakery. Granted it takes a couple seconds of pre-planning since the rise/proofing times are long, but most basic no-knead recipes are super forgiving on that, and if something comes up before you’re able to bake it, you can toss your uncooked dough into the fridge for short term storage, or freeze it for long term.
Yeah, but then you read my main point. Cooking can be a hobby, something you want to do. Find that