I worked in kitchens for years so I'm not the average home cook but even so I think if you're finding a two week old pile of ground beef in the fridge that's on you. You might have to accept that you are disorganized. A home refridgerator isn't a big place to point your eyeballs at and assess and marshall ingredients. Aside from that, I mean as far as "prep" goes... I hesitate to even use the word prep. Prepping is usually a term used for something more involved. Like if you were making your own ketchup and mustard from scratch, that would be prep and would take time. If you've just got pre-made ingredients ready to assemble into a dish then that's not really prep.
Hamburgers for a family of five with a counter-top mise en place...
Place five buns opened up on a large cutting board (1 minute tops).
Squirt your bottled condiments on the buns (1 minute tops).
Hand-rip your lettuce, five servings, place on buns (3 minutes tops).
Slice tomato rounds for each burger (3 minutes I guess if your knife skills are really bad).
Take ground beef and hand-form five patties (5 minutes tops).
Cook all five patties at once in a large pan or whatever you use (10 minutes tops - smash them if you want them well done or done fast).
Spatula out the patties onto the buns and you've got burgers.
Shouldn't take more than 20 or so minutes really and I even left the cooking part for last so as to not complicate things. What you should really be doing is cooking the burgers WHILE you set up the buns. Personally I could go from all those ingredients sitting visibly in a fridge to five burgers ready to serve in about 10 minutes.
Maybe what we have here with you and with many others in America is just a lack of food knowledge. Home food culture used to be all there was before fast food. Those traditions are lost and everyone's skill in preparing meals at home as atrophied over decades.
I mean I get that there's no more Nana in the kitchen makin the sauce and both parents work but there's so many easy, quick meals that can be made for very cheap if people simply acquired the knowledge and practiced. You don't wanna eat those fast food patties anyways they're probably like half fake with fraudulent filler material or whatever. It's hard to even recreate that lab-researched frankenfood.
> Maybe what we have here with you and with many others in America is just a lack of food knowledge.
This is exactly what's happening. This is why I find it so upsetting to hear a source like NPR mindlessly repeating the myth that fast food is cheaper. People have gotten totally out of touch with basic home economics type stuff and the food industry is all too happy for them to stay in the dark.
I can do a variation on bolognese sauce with ground beef, a few bits of thin sliced onions and finally a dab of tomato pasta sauce. 15 minutes top and done while the pasta cooks.
Cooking at home is just stupendously cheaper. I don't understand how anyone can claim otherwise. I made the switch 3 years ago and the impact on budget was phenomenal.
Hamburgers for a family of five with a counter-top mise en place...
Place five buns opened up on a large cutting board (1 minute tops). Squirt your bottled condiments on the buns (1 minute tops). Hand-rip your lettuce, five servings, place on buns (3 minutes tops). Slice tomato rounds for each burger (3 minutes I guess if your knife skills are really bad). Take ground beef and hand-form five patties (5 minutes tops). Cook all five patties at once in a large pan or whatever you use (10 minutes tops - smash them if you want them well done or done fast). Spatula out the patties onto the buns and you've got burgers.
Shouldn't take more than 20 or so minutes really and I even left the cooking part for last so as to not complicate things. What you should really be doing is cooking the burgers WHILE you set up the buns. Personally I could go from all those ingredients sitting visibly in a fridge to five burgers ready to serve in about 10 minutes.
Maybe what we have here with you and with many others in America is just a lack of food knowledge. Home food culture used to be all there was before fast food. Those traditions are lost and everyone's skill in preparing meals at home as atrophied over decades.
I mean I get that there's no more Nana in the kitchen makin the sauce and both parents work but there's so many easy, quick meals that can be made for very cheap if people simply acquired the knowledge and practiced. You don't wanna eat those fast food patties anyways they're probably like half fake with fraudulent filler material or whatever. It's hard to even recreate that lab-researched frankenfood.