How long it takes to cook a dinner

Is my DH exaggerating, or is it possible? He said his mother could cook a dinner in an hour. This was long ago when she would have been making traditional Japanese meals. I find with all the cutting, cooking, setting up all the zillions of dishes & utensils, it takes much, much longer. So different from home cooking where I just make like a pot of chili and rice and a vegetable dish. So easy peasy and fast. How long should a typical Japanese dinner take on average? And how many dishes (eg main dish, rice, side dish, soup, dessert, etc???) on average? Thanks!

What's a DH?

Cooking a typical Japanese meal "(main dish, rice, side dish, soup, dessert,)" hardly takes an hour even.

A common menu might be
1 protein (grilled fish, karaage, stir-fried beef, etc)
1 main carb (rice)
sometimes 1 secondary carb (boiled or stewed beans or pumpkin)
1 main vegetable (boiled cabbage, greens, etc.)
1 secondary vegetable (pickled something, cold vegetable)

Soups usually come in the morning and desserts are not as common compared to western meals.

Of course, the menu varies vastly depending on where you're from but in any case with an hour you should be able to cook and tidy up the kitchen.

I'm a house husband. I can tell you are impressed. It doesn't take me long to cook dinner. There is no oven involved in most japanese cooking so things cook pretty quickly. rice goes in the rice cooker and hit the on button. While that is cooking prepare the side dishes. i often make ton(jiru) soup. it is just miso soup with extra vegies and some pork. it doesn't take long. another side dish is tofu. tofu is bought from the supermarket and you just add some fish flakes, spring onion and soy sauce. i may stir fry some vegies. if i cook fish it is usually done under the grill. it is very simple and basic. other times it is pork or chicken. usually shallow fried quite quickly. so all in all it takes less than an hour.

It's actually pretty easy to cook Japanese.
Some links:
http://japanesefood.about.com/

And this site is interestin for you as well:
http://www.halfhourmeals.com/recipe/tofu-mushroom-with-egg-flavorjapan...

It shows japanese meals that can be made in 30 minutes. Even traditional meals can be done in a good 60 minutes!

no problem here cooking dinner in 30 minutes or so. my microwave has an oven built into it so i use that whenever i'm baking. if anything needs to be fried or chopped or whatever at the same time i do it while it's in the oven.

by the time i'm done the oven stuff is ready to come out and rest for 5mins while i plate the rest of the food.

1hour is more than enough for most foods i think. when i was living with my ex she used to make gyoza and stuff like that in under an hour.

a DH is a "Dear Husband"

These smaller, but numerous side dishes (often my aunt would have 5 or 6 per meal) are called "okazu".I'd like to add something-most of the cleaning and chopping is done to smaller amounts than what most Americans are used to. A medium size bowl of washed, trimmed and stir fried green beans will feed a family of 4 or 5. They don't try to make a large pot.

My aunt would typically make several vegetables that are not even cooked-like raw shredded carrots and radish with wakame or edamame in a rice vinegar dressing, or sliced cucumber with sliced apples in rice vinegar. Veggies are quickly sauted and as you know, thinly sliced meat or fish do not take long to cook. Even "jaga-niku' a potato/beef stew is made in less than an hour because the beef is thinly sliced and the potatoes are cut into small cubes.

MomotaroPeachBoy,

Let me put it this way. I'm a mother and I would NOT make dinner for my family unless it's going to take me less than an hour. I'm not a professional chef. I have other things to do.

You say "traditional" meals, but I suppose your "DH" (whatever it is) is not refering to anything like "meal for the royal family." It's probably just simple cooking that has been going on in Japanese households for a couple of centuries or so. Maybe people in the 19th century had to get up early to build a fire in the grill, but nowadays, electric appliance makers in each country have made cooking simple.

Wow, thanks for all the replies. Never was good at cooking to begin with, so maybe that, plus a little toddler under foot plus learning to cook food I have never made before makes it so hard for me. I guess I am just sooo not a cook. I am so inefficient and slow.

DH doesn't like eating vegetables. FIL can't eat raw/hard/crunchy food. They both like stuff like tempura and tonkatsu, and I hate deep frying stuff, not only health-wise, but cleanup-wise. How often do you find your family eats deep fried foods?

What other food does fried rice match with? I made it once with hamburger, but then DH said he wanted regular white rice. I get so frustrated not knowing what kind of menu to make.

I made tonjiru once before and was told that's more like a winter-type dish. More frustration! So many foods in my recipe books are either "winter-type dishes" or are the kind of veggies dishes that they wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

So I tried asking them what they eat but ....ahhh baby waking,. got to go

Wow, you're stuck feeding a bunch of picky eaters...
Poor you.

Well, the first thing you need to do to help yourself is understand how to make your time in the kitchen more efficient.

The key to quick, efficient, and delicious cooking is timing. You prepare certain things at certain times. Create and protect the workflow, and everything falls into place.

Try applying the following workflow:
1) Prepare your starch
Carbs take the longest. Be it rice, potatoes, or a flour-based (crust or bread) dish, You have to decide what you're doing with your starch first. If this is white rice, the rice cooker does all the work and 30-45 minutes later, it's done.
To cook normal white rice, take the pot out of the rice cooker, put rice in, fill with cold water, wash by stirring or pressing with your hand, drain the water (this water is great for plants or skin care). Repeat 2-3 times. Fill with water until the rice is covered up to the first digit on your middle finger (about one inch). Put the pot in and press start.

2) Cut and season protein (chicken, fish, etc.). Set aside or wrap and put in fridge.
If you do this right after preparing the starch, you meat will be a little more tender and flavorful when it's time to cook.

3) Prepare vegetables

Here you need to understand the basics of vegetables. There are basically three categories for most types of cooking:
a) Flavor vegetables
b) Texture vegetables
c) Presentation vegetables

-Flavor vegetables you prepare first (after seasoning the meat) and typically heat the longest. Onions, garlic are the common examples. Typically you slice them thin. Use olive oil or grapeseed oil.
-Texture vegetables are the "chunky" parts of a dish. Tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, etc. You time the amount of heat applied to ensure they are cooked but maintain some of their texture.
-Presentation vegetables are to make the dish visually more appealing, are added last, and heated the least to maintain color. This might be a small amount of the bell peppers, parsley, cilantro, etc. They stay in the fridge until the last minute and are chopped small.

If you're cooking any kind of dish that involves a pot or frying pan:
1- Heat and add oil
2- Add flavor vegetables (high heat)
3- Add protein (high heat)
4- Add presentation vegetables (high heat)
5- Cover with lid until the oil, steam and natural juices build to form sort of a sauce
6- Remove lid (mid heat)
7- Seasoning

Unless your making curry, don't season your dish until the food is almost completely cooked.
People often ruin dishes by tasting and seasoning too soon. You need to give chemistry time to do its work. Acids break down, natural flavors mix.
8- Presentation vegetables.

As for your picky family, you can't not feed your husband vegetables unless you want him to have a stroke at age 50.
Then life will really be hard.

Frying isn't as bad as you might think. It's what fry and how you do it.

If your family likes fried foods, make vegetable tempura (onions, pumpkin, peppers, tomatoes, etc.) This is actually low cal, healthy, and very filling. You can add a little chicken or frozen shrimp if they complain.

The other way to get people to eat vegetables is Japanese curry. Curry is a year-around dish that is cheap to make, very easy to prepare, and is great for 1) clearing out the fridge and 2) tricking people (usually kids though) into eating things they don't like.
The store-bought curry flavor cubes will mask almost anything (except bananas and natto).
Cut the unwanted veggies into small bites or even dump everything into a blender.

Lastly about frying. You don't have to deep frying to get fried crispy yumminess. Use a fry pan and a thin layer of oil.

Fried rice can be made with veggies, shrimp, chicken, pork, just about anything.

But if your family likes white, more power to them. It's easier on you.
Japanese people have a thing for using a bunch of small plates. That means you need a bunch of small dishes. Instead of dumping everything into fried rice or a stew, deconstruct the dish into several small dishes.
Deconstructed fried rice.
White rice
Boiled vegetables (in some water, soy, and dashi no moto. Sprinkle some fresh chopped green onions on that.)
Grilled or pan-fried chicken or shrimp.

If you live in an average location, the vegetables will be local or at least domestic, which means your main select will be whatever is seasonal (eggplant, onion, peppers, etc.). Just go with whatever is cheapest cause that's what's in season.

Nice post, kyototrans! I can use some of those ideas as well
:-)

That is a great help, thank you very much. So I tried to apply this advice for tonight's dinner.

Tonight's menu:
1. White rice (2 cups)
2. Teriyaki fish (for FIL) and teriyaki chicken (for DH) together with teriyaki veggies (1 bell pepper, 2 shiitake, 8 asparagus, 1 eggplant)
3. Egg Drop soup with chicken, shiitake, green onion (4 cups)
4. Shiitake (about 8 pieces) side dish
5. 12 Gyoza
6. 1 Asian pear

I think the advice maybe helped me to go faster? At least it felt like it. Yet...

I am estimating it still took me perhaps an hour and 35 minutes to prepare and cook and tidy up the kitchen as I went (put food away/wash cooking dishes/utensils). I should say though that this time I did the gyoza in 2 batches since I had to use a small fry pan, but even then that would shave off 10 or so minutes. Am I making too many dishes? I didn't even include a drink or tsukemono this time! Is it taking me so long because I make sauces from scratch (for the teriyaki dish, the shiitake dish, and the egg drop soup)? They all just basically required dashi, shoyu, sake, mirin, sugar... I was moving all the time and am not going at a snail's pace either.

Is it because I am measuring everything out? However, tonight for the first time, while I did measure ingredients for the sauces still, instead of being so careful and using measuring spoons for each separate amount, I just got a 2 Tbsp measuring medicine cup and eyeballed the amounts, so I felt that should help me go faster. Apparently not. Are you all just eyeballing it without any measuring device whatsoever? Or are you foregoing that and buying ready made sauces? I try not to buy those because of stuff like msg in it (reactions to msg in our family).

I am baffled at how slow I am!

Shaving off 10 minutes is a lot!
If you're responsible for cooking then you should make sure you have the tools you need.
Kitchen tools (pans, etc.) are very cheap so definitely make sure the kitchen is set up how YOU think it should be.

As a kid, I grew up with the Joy of Cooking. It's all about measuring. But you measure until you know yourself and your tools well enough to not measure. But measuring shouldn't be eating up your time.
Sauces that don't require heat shouldn't take much time either.

If you're making the gyoza from scratch, that could take a while. Otherwise, I think that menu is fairly simple.

There's going to be a period where the food is cooking and your hands are free. Use that time to wash the dishes. Cleaning up the kitchen takes 10-15 minutes and cleaning as you go cuts down on that time even more.

Don't be too hard on yourself. It's easy for an experienced person to say this and that but if you're really just coming into cooking, give yourself time and have fun. You'll get faster and more consistent.


Just looking at that menu, you should worry as much about sodium intake as you do MSG.

Thanks again!

If I make nabe, such as kim chee nabe, what other filling side dish matches? (I include a fruit for dessert.) Everytime I make nabe DH gets hungry later on. I ask him what I should make, but he always says just the nabe is fine. But it isn't since he always eats a ramen later on which is not so healthy.

At the end of nabe, put rice and egg to make "ojiya" a kind of Japanese risotto.
Or you can put udon (already boiled).
Both can be filling enough, and you make the most of the great soup after all the good ingredients were cooked in it - enjoy to the last drop of the nice soup of nabe! :)

That's a great idea to put rice or udon in! Thanks! You all are so incredibly helpful!

I would like to next make a menu out of chijimi (which DH bought a package of) but have absolutely no clue what other food/side dishes to make with it. I believe it is a Korean food so now I don't know what to match with it, kimchee? Rice? What kind of protein? Soup? I sure could use help. Thanks

what i always do with my extra gyoza filling, mix it with chijimi batter and just fry. add kimchi for flavour..

Everytime I cook things like potato, carrots, eggplant, etc. I am told it is too hard, not soft enough. Even though I try the method of easily cutting it with a chopstick, it doesn't work. Too me, it is soft enough, but not to them. How long should they be cooked in general, time-wise?

Tell them to do it. They seem way too fussy and your priority should be your child.

Actually, I did! I told them I couldn't take the stresses (of everything adding up) anymore and let them sweat it out for a couple months. But now I really do want to start up cooking again as a family now that things are kind of settling down again. It's just that I am not a good cook and I want to make tasty Japanese dishes for them. So my frustration is really at me, that I can't seem to get it right (I guess I was letting out my frustrations at them when I wrote my posts and shouldn't have written them like that). DH and FIL have been very understanding all along, and they actually don't criticize me so much as when I ask them how it was (wanting an honest answer) they let me know.

To be fair to them, I should also say, FIL can't eat hard food because of teeth issues. Also, the food here is seasonal, so it's hard for me to relate. Plus, when the weather is hot, they don't have an appetite. Or when they are stressed. Me, I eat anytime, anywhere, in any situation. Always have.