When did we become so obsessed with cooking things quickly? On “Iron Chef America,” contestants duel it out to create a gourmet meal in just one hour; there’s the quick fire competitions on “Top Chef;” Rachel Ray only cooks in 30 minutes; and now we have a show debuting on the Food Network where competitors have 24 hours to open a restaurant. Enough already! Food isn’t all about speed!
Gone are the days where you slowly roast something all day, marinade overnight, or let sit for hours. We want it now, and just as much as food is art and technique, it’s also part chemistry. The flavors that cause our mouths to water don’t always develop in 30 just minutes.
For the record, you can cook great things in 30 minutes or an hour; in fact, most of what I cook takes way less than an hour. But that shouldn’t be the goal of every cook. “Foodtainment” is teaching a new generation of home cooks that brevity is the norm. Someone once asked me how long it takes me to cook a pork shoulder, and when I replied, “Eight hours,” they were appalled. They wondered aloud to me if that was really worth it. I say, “YES!” Sadly, quick has become the popular choice, and with quick, we are cutting dangerous corners.
I refuse to believe that we’re spending less time with our food because of time restraints. We would rather watch chefs duel it out on TV in an hour than spend that time in the kitchen feeding ourselves. A new kind of chemistry has crept its way into the kitchen as a substitute for time-- processed ingredients.
My standard test for people’s kitchen knowledge is what I like to call the “biscuit test.” Do people know how ridiculously easy it is to make their own biscuits? Fifteen minutes of prep time (if that), 20 minutes of baking and you’ll have the best biscuits in the world. But in order to shave off those extra minutes of prep, people will buy a pre-packed roll of biscuits and bake them.
My biscuits have five ingredients: flour, baking powder, milk, butter and salt. A package of store brand frozen biscuits from a national retailer has 34. Are those minutes saved worth the extra ingredients like sugar, palm oil and preservatives? Many of us have been convinced that they are.
We have been told that 15 minutes saved in the kitchen is worth it in our busy lives, but the truth of the matter is-- it's killing us.
It’s become pretty clear that our diet of fatty, processed foods crammed with sugars is leading to numerous health problems and premature death. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 found for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children in America will have shorter life expectancies than their parents. The blame, according the researchers, is the rapid rise in childhood obesity.
Pretty much since its invention, TV has been blamed for life’s problems. On this one, I side with the TV blamers. Personal accountability aside, we are bombarded everyday by messages telling us that it’s okay to cut corners with our food. Commercials promise us that if you save time in the kitchen you’ll have extra time to spend at the dinner table with your family. We see chefs on the TV showing us that they can cook in a short amount of time and that gives the amateur false hope that they can too.
“Foodtainment” isn’t completely at fault. People should know better and realize that they aren’t a professional chef, but with programming that screams out at viewers that professionals do this in an hour is such a disservice. Old cooking shows used to teach and emphasized time needed to successfully create the dish. Today, it’s all about getting it done in front of the viewer. For some reason, network executives have determined it’s more entertaining to the audience to cook recipes that can be completed in the 30 or so minutes than to take on larger recipes.
So what does that mean? To a kitchen novice it means frustration. Cooking takes time to master and when we are already so hard pressed to milk every second of the day, we cut corners and advertisers are all too eager to fill the void. Commercials on these food shows are more than happy to provide suggestions on how you can make up for your lack of kitchen skills.
These commercials are nothing but smoke and mirrors but we’ve become obsessed with the notion of passing off pre-packaged food as “home cooked.” TV ads boast “create a home cooked meal in just minutes.” I’m sorry, home cooked meals don’t come packed with preservatives, extra sodium, hidden sugars and partially hydrogenated oils. Some ads and food packaging take this even further. Frozen food aisles have words shouting at you “freshly frozen,” there’s nothing fresh about frozen food.
How hard is it to boil pasta and make a chicken breast? That is a 30 minute meal-- less if you’re experienced in the kitchen. Instead of turning on the stove and cooking it on their own, people feel more comfortable reaching into the freezer and having their meal defrosted and ready to eat in three minutes. More time in front of the television, I guess.
Is that really time saved? I’m sorry, but last time I checked, my chicken alfredo recipe didn’t call for sugar, caramel color, isolated soy protein, xanthan gum and 40 other ingredients like the popular frozen choice.
I’m not advocating going home and making a cassoulet every day or roast a leg of lamb for hours every day, but there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we eat at home. Do I make everything from scratch at home? No, that’s not realistic. I have canned sauces, frozen foods, packaged pastas in my house.
It’s how you use your food that’s important. You have to look at labels and you have to approach food knowing that every time you enter your kitchen, it’s not going to be an episode of “Chopped.” It’s time to take a step backward when it comes to technology and get better acquainted with our ingredients. Then again, what do I know, it’s not like our lives are at stake.
