Recipe timing claims are nearly always wrong. Not dishonestly wrong — the author probably did make the dish in the stated time, under conditions that don’t reflect how most people actually cook. Their knives are sharp. Their mise en place is done before the clock starts. They’ve made this dish fifteen times. The kitchen is already warm, the stock is already reduced, the herbs are already picked.
In a home kitchen, on a weeknight, with a slightly blunt knife and no idea where the good olive oil went, the same recipe takes longer. This is not a failure — it’s just what cooking looks like outside a test kitchen.
We try to be honest about this. Here’s what our timing means, and what it doesn’t.
What we’re counting
Active time. The time you are actually doing something — chopping, stirring, watching the pan, assembling. If the oven needs to heat to 220°C before the food goes in, that ten minutes of preheating is not counted in our timing. If a marinade needs twenty minutes, that’s not counted either. If a braise needs to simmer for an hour, that hour of passive time isn’t what we mean by “ready in an hour.”
We try to note passive time separately where it’s relevant. “35 minutes, including a 20-minute braise” is more useful than “35 minutes” followed by a recipe that requires you to stand at the stove for 35 consecutive minutes.
What we’re not counting
Shopping. Washing up. The five minutes you spend reading the recipe twice through before starting because you know, from experience, that not doing this leads to problems. Coming to temperature — fish taken straight from the fridge takes longer to cook than fish that’s been sitting on the counter for fifteen minutes. These things are real time costs that recipes rarely acknowledge.
We’re also not counting the learning curve. The first time you make a dish, it takes longer than it will the third time. A recipe that takes 25 minutes when you know it might take 40 minutes when you don’t. This is normal and expected and not a sign that you’re doing it wrong.
The things that genuinely are fast
Some dishes are actually quick. Not “quick with caveats” — actually quick, start to plate.
Scrambled eggs with good butter — four minutes if the pan is the right temperature. The difficulty is resisting the urge to rush them.
A dressed salad with something warm through it — torn bread toasted in olive oil, a soft-boiled egg, a handful of good tinned fish, some quickly blanched green beans. If you’re starting from a pre-washed bag of leaves, ten minutes.
Pasta with a pan sauce — not a bolognese, not a ragu. Aglio e olio: garlic, olive oil, dried chilli, good parmesan, ten minutes from water boiling to bowl. Or butter, lemon, anchovy and capers over linguine: similarly fast.
Soba noodles, cold — cook in four minutes, drain, rinse immediately under cold water, dress and eat. With a pre-made dressing in the fridge, genuinely fifteen minutes.
A decent omelette — two minutes in a hot pan if you’ve practised. Longer if you haven’t. But worth practising.
The trap of optimistic timing
The problem with over-optimistic timing on a recipe isn’t just that it makes you late for dinner. It’s that it creates a feedback loop of stress during cooking — you feel behind before you’ve started, you rush things that shouldn’t be rushed, and the food suffers for it. A steak pushed onto the grill before the pan is hot enough, because the recipe said it would only take eight minutes total and it’s already been twelve. Rice lifted before it’s ready because the recipe said fifteen minutes and it’s been twenty.
Better to assume it will take longer than stated and be pleasantly surprised, than to assume the recipe timing is accurate and feel behind from the moment you start.
The best kitchen habit isn’t speed. It’s reading the recipe all the way through before you start and making peace with however long it actually takes.