Fair enough. We have our opinions. For me the cooking time starts when I enter the kitchen and finishes when I serve the meal. It's the time I spent cooking the meal.
Your thinking is what enabled a generation of '20 minute meal' recipe books that actually take closer to 40 mins.
It's impossible to give an accurate estimate unless you're starting from the same place (and even then it's hard to give an accurate estimate when you're starting from the same place - how long does it take a pot of water to boil?)
My parents are an absoulte disaster for organising their kitchen, they have a fridge that is absolutely _rammed_ full with no order whatsoever, and a single pantry cupboard that contains cereals, vinegars, and everything else in one. On the contrary, my kitchen is organised very loosely by meal, while still structured and categorised. I can dice/slice veg for a full meal in the length of time it takes my partner to get the ingredients out of the fridge.
> Your thinking is what enabled a generation of '20 minute meal' recipe books that actually take closer to 40 mins.
Nah, that's just people lying about cooking times, like "caramelize the onions" in 3 minutes, and not measuring how long it actually took them to do the recipe.
Your thinking is what enabled a generation of '20 minute meal' recipe books that actually take closer to 40 mins.