"Cooking Conundrum: Are Recipe Times Misleading New Cooks? As a novice cook, navigating the world of culinary recipes can be a daunting task. A recent post on the internet has sparked a debate among home cooks, highlighting a common issue: recipe cooking times often seem to be woefully inaccurate. A user shares their frustration with a recipe that required a 50% increase in cooking time to achieve the desired internal temperature, and they're not alone. Many stovetop and oven recipes have left this cook wondering if they're simply not understanding the basics or if recipe creators are intentionally underestimating cooking times to make dishes seem quicker. The issue raises important questions about the reliability of recipe instructions and the challenges faced by new cooks. Can you relate to this cooking conundrum, or do you think there's a simple explanation?"
I am a new cook trying to expand my culinary horizons, and it seems like almost every recipe I try needs more cook time than expected. Most recent is this recipe: https://themodernproper.com/marry-me-chicken (*delicious*, by the way, though next time I will be halving the chicken and slicing into cutlets for a higher sauce:chicken ratio.....also, sun dried tomatoes kind of taste like raisins???? First time tasting them, I am a convert.) I know what a simmer looks like. I had to simmer for 5+ minutes longer than the "10-12 minute" cooking time to reach an acceptable internal temperature. That's like a 50% increase. And it seems like every single roasted veggie recipe I've tried also needs +~50% time in the oven. Which I would chalk up to my oven being miscalibrated if I hadn't also had a number of other stovetop mishaps based on basic boil/simmer instructions. It seems like boiling pasta is, thus far, the only thing where the estimated cooking time is accurate. So: am I just such a bad cook that I don't know what a simmer is and am wildly underheating things? (Sounds sarcastic but I am absolutely willing to accept this as a possibility.) Or are recipe creators shortening the cook time to make the recipe seem quicker? All I know for sure is that, as a new cook, it is incredibly stressful for a recipe to tell you that you should be on the overcooked side of done, while your thermometer says you've still got a long ways to go. Help! submitted by /u/laurpr2 [link] [comments]
