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Convenience cooking is the practice of streamlining recipes for simplicity and speed of preparation.[1] It is a common practice inWestern cultures, where both men and women work outside the home and elaborate meals are difficult if not impossible to prepare given the time constraints. Though seemingly a recent phenomenon, guides to convenience cooking go as far back as 1930French Cooking in Ten Minutes byEdouard de Pomiane, which tried to minimize the time put into much French cooking of the day.
Current well-known practitioners of the art includeRachael Ray andSandra Lee; in addition,Cook's Illustrated magazine has often incorporated convenience-cooking principles into their recipes.
A significant amount of convenience cooking revolves around simplifying recipes to five or fewer ingredients. There is a substantial genre of cookbooks devoted to such dishes, often, though not always using otherprepared foods as ingredients. In this division, "ingredients" generally does not include such things asspices and water.
Another important skill in convenience cooking istime management. This genre of cooking focuses largely on process and technique rather than ingredients, and is aimed at getting the best quality out of a quickly prepared meal as possible, especially using common kitchen tools rather than specialized equipment such asconvection ovens andmicrowave ovens. Some recipes remove certain steps that take large amounts of time. Sometimeskneadingdough is removed from the process of making bread because it requires large amounts of time and effort. There are machines likeRotimatic available in market which makes Rotis, Puris, etc from the flour in just few minutes.
A common adjunct to this school of food preparation is theslow cooker, which allows unattended preparation of braises, soups, and stews.
