My wife never mentioned this, but something I’ve noticed about myself. We split cooking, though my wife does more than I do. We both bake, but she also does more of that. One difference I have noticed is that when I cook something, I always wind up using a lot more stuff – not ingredients, but cooking things: More pots and pans, more bowls to hold chopped or mixed ingredients to add later, more utensils, etc. than my wife will use for a similar dish (like a stew or casserole). One thing I do is with eggs. If I’m adding a raw egg to a dish, I will break the egg into a small bowl first. I do this because once (only once!) I broke an egg directly into a cake I was making and it was bad – could tell from the discolored yolk and terrible smell. I had to discard all of what I had already put in the bowl and start again. So, now I break the egg(s) first into a separate bowl and then if OK (and – additional advantage – remove any shell fragments first) then it goes into the mixing bowl.
So is this just me? Do other men who cook (not barbecue – not counting that) wind up using more stuff? Is it my obsessive-compulsive nature? Oh, when I asked my wife, she replied, “Sure, any time you cook, there’s always more bowls, pots, and utensils on the counter than when I cook.” She doesn’t complain though, because I clean the stuff up when done
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I don’t use more stuff.
Misen place my dude misen place.
Also cleaning as you cook is an important part of cooking.
Some of kenjis earlier POV videos are great for this.
No. My wife uses WAY WAY more stuff than I do. Clean up after I cook is a breeze. Sometimes I wash dishes as she’s cooking so we don’t spend the whole evening cleaning dishes.
The only difference I notice when I cook vs my wife is that she accumulates all the pots, pans, etc and washes them all at the end. Where, when I cook, I tend to wash and dry things immediately when im done with them, while cooking or waiting for preheat. Then all that is too be cleaned is the serving dishes and final cooking dish.
I don’t think I use more dishes, but I never really paid attention since I use, wash, dry, put away as the process goes vs having a stack at the end.
Idk if I use more stuff, but I am way slower. Idk why, but no matter how good I get, I’m just unsure of how the cooking will turn out
The opposite.
Her meals are vastly more complex and use way more dishes.
I’ll marinate something and cook it, or do a sheet pan meal,
I also clean while I go so there’s less cleanup after…
But yea I use way less stuff than she does.
Yep I always use 2 more pans extra… Terrible also means so much more cleaning.
No. My wife uses a lot more stuff. She always has to use a colander, while I just drain the pan using the lid. She also uses multiple bowls or plates to store cut vegetables or meat. I just chop it in the order that it goes in the pan, and don’t store it.
Not really but in my household you can tell who cooked by the state of the kitchen, my wife goes for the clean it all at the end approach and I go for the clean as you go approach.
Hey OP. 49 year old married father of two in the UK here.
When my wife cooks, I wash up, so she uses every single fucking utensil and pot in the kitchen
When I cook, my wife puts most stuff in the dishwasher but casually forgets to wash the pots each and every fucking time, so I use as few pots as possible.
I often use less. I tend to be more okay with re-using stuff. For example, I am okay using the same pot that I used to boil vegetables to then boil pasta. My wife would want to use a new pot for each ingredient.
I use a fraction of the stuff my wife uses. And I clean it as I go. So at the end of the meal there might be a pot and a mixing spoon on the counter and everything else is clean and put away. When my wife is done, the kitchen is a disaster.
After having lived alone for over a decade, I have learned that the less stuff I use the less I have to clean. I dont prep anything, I dont have all my ingredients in little bowls, I store my food in the pots I cooked them in. Baking is different, even then, I have a wet bowl and a dry bowl and thats it.
Oh yeah, I’m an absolute Trainwreck when I cook. I can cook well, very well but I do make a mess. Have a different utensil, pan, cup for everything. Takes me longer too but what comes out is usually pretty awesome.
I don’t know, my wife would actually have to cook once in a while for me to be able to answer this.
I use what I need and pay little attention to what she uses.
If you’re cooking, you shouldn’t be cleaning up, so it shouldn’t matter. 🤣 I, on the other hand, am single, which means whatever I used has to be rinsed and hopefully dishwasher safe. 😂
No, the opposite.
I do, yeah. I use all kinds of seasonings and a ton of butter and amino acids.
I use WAY more stuff but I also cook more complicated things?
The split usually is that I cook dinner and my wife cooks lunch (she works from home and I bounce in and out for my job).
But I truly like cooking and find it a little bit of a stress release. I get to just focus on the recipe, get creative, and quickly get a finished product (that I can eat).
I use more and typically don’t wash as I go. I CAN wash as I go, I just have to actively think about it.
Basically the opposite. Also got the habit of cleaning while cooking, so everything except what is going on the table is generally clean when we start eating.
I use way less stuff. And I clean as I go. But it’s not a fair comparison being as I used to work in a kitchen. She cooks just as well as I do but I’m more efficient.
I use less.
She was high maintenance…
Also unlike me, she never cleaned up as she worked.