OK, I'll admit butterflied chicken can be cooked that quickly. But basically all other forms of chicken take longer. For curry for example, even though I cut it into small pieces and it could be cooked only 8 minutes since you're going to cook it in the paste later, it's just not going to brown properly and the flavour is not going to be as good. Normal breasts or thighs take longer as well.

It's been a while since I made a meat-based curry (vegetarian now), but from when I was cooking with meat regularly there were a few things that helped hugely with that - hot pan (common theme, heh), and cooking in batches/not overcrowding the pan. You _definitely_ can't brown chicken for 6 portions of curry in one pan in 6-8 minutes, but you _can_ brown it in 2 (maybe 3) batches in 6 minutes per-batch.

Honestly though, by the time you're accurately gauging browning vs cooking meat, and eyeballing batch size vs pan size, you've moved well past the point of relying on cooking times from recipes.

Preheating the pan is part of the cooking time, IMO. In your recipe I would heat my pan for a good 3-4 mins to be sure the temp stays high after the chicken goes in.

I don't agree, in the same way that preheating an oven isn't considered part of the cooking time, or vegetable prep isn't considered part of the cooking time.

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.

Any reasonable estimate above 0 is more accurate than one that doesn't include prep time.

I don’t think any chef (or recipe author) would agree with you. If only because they have preheating pans all the time.

Also the actual pan matters, if you have a thick-bottomed cast iron pan that’s been fully preheated it might not even notice that you dropped produce on, whereas a thin teflon-coated aluminium pan will drop through the floor.

An other huge factor is overcrowding, especially pans.

Chefs use thin carbon steel pans which heat up and cool down very quickly. They also have much more powerful gas burners.

My advice is related to common domestic pans with heavier bottom and common domestic weak burners.

Agree that overcrowding is a huge issue especially with water-heavy ingredients like onions, peppers.