LadyButterfly she/herWe need to make informed choices
TreczoksWhat mess? Never heard about cleaning your station while cooking? There is more than enough time to put things away and dishes in the dishwasher while dinner is cooking. Knifes are cleaned immediately after use. No mess.
This is the way.
For some things you do have to multitask and keep the plates spinning, so to speak. For example making sure something doesn’t burn while you’re cleaning the last mess.
And that is something that a lot of people need to acclimate to I think. If anyone reading this is one of those people then I’d suggest focusing on reducing the mess as much as possible while you’re cooking, even if you aren’t perfect. Then try to take care of whatever’s left after you finish cooking but before you actually eat. One or two dirty implements is a lot less daunting to take care of than a sink full of stuff.
Another thing I’d suggest is trying to reduce the amount of stuff you dirty in the first place by focusing on single pot recipes or modifying a recipe to be single pot. Frying meat and onions in the bottom of a soup pot before deglazing and adding the rest of the ingredients, for example. This isn’t always possible to do of course, especially if you’re doing something big and fancy, but you should save those kinds of recipes for times when you have all day to dedicate to them.
Depends on how many things you are making at the same time and the volume of mess.per item.
Cleaning as you go is the best, but sometimes you can’t stop stirring or chopping or peeling to do it.
Sometimes there isn’t time to prep before starting, or room to do all the prep, or a ton of other reasons for not doing all the prep ahead of time.
That’s why I said depends.
Within the context of the original post: if what you’re cooking leaves a huge mess and this is a significant enough problem to complain on the internet about it there was a failure of preparation at several points.
Some things involve multiple utentils and dishes at the end of the process and there is no amount of preparation that avoids needing to clean multiple things at the end. Like making a cake will have the same amount of dishes when you put it in the oven, more if you do additional prep in small bowls ahead of time.
They are really just complaining about the amount of things to clean and the mess that some stuff makes as part of the process.