So I have on of Rachel Ray's "quick meal" cookbooks and I realized the reason her meals are considered "30 minute meals" are because she must be on crack. The only reason her recipes are "30 minute meals" are because they take a ridiculous amount of multitasking that I don't seem to be capable of. Sometimes I make them without the side dishes so I can actually make them. Heh.

I completely agree. Even just making the primary recipe in 30 minutes or less is challenging for many of the recipes, as they usually start with lettuce that has been washed and dried, 3 kinds of chopped vegetables, and sliced (and precooked) chicken breasts.

The only truly 30 minute recipes I have that are reliably done in 30 minutes involve the pressure cooker.

Rachalle uses great quick ingredients from great stores. If you have the money she has great receipes.

I've found, through trial and error, my best, most practical, quickest cookbook is my big Better Homes and Gardens book.

Might that be the binder-style one with the red and white check cover? That is one useful book. I've altered many of the recipes - customized seasonings and modified this or that. The recipes are great basics, though, and great references. I may season my chicken broth differently than their recipe calls for, but I know I can use the quantity of water and meat/bones and teh slow cooker settings from teh recipe and have it turn out right.

I also suggest the Better Homes and Gardens Big Book of 30-Minute Meals. I got this one in college, at Cosco, and it's great. Most of the time, the recipe concentrates on the meat and offers suggestions, like rice or instant mashed potatoes and grilled or sauteed veggies, as sides. Quite often, I pair the 30-minute main dish with frozen veggies (usually just as healthy as fresh) or just a big salad (bagged lettuce, washed, somtimes by itself) to save time.

It's all about the prep. Anyone can make Rachel's 30 minute meals in 30 minutes if all the ingredients are prepared, cut, washed, diced, measured, etc. just like they are on her show!

Multi-tasking the side dishes is hard, when it's the first time you're making something. So expect it to take longer. But if it's something you liked and will make again (and again), then you will be able to develop a rhythm, and can coordinate your efforts on several dishes at the same time. It's just a matter of gaining a little experience and practice.

TJA:

It's all about the prep. Anyone can make Rachel's 30 minute meals in 30 minutes if all the ingredients are prepared, cut, washed, diced, measured, etc. just like they are on her show!

And clearly, you've never actually watched her show, 30 Minute Meals. Nothing is prepped. She does everything, including washing mushrooms, in real time.

Yes, she takes a lot of shortcuts (she doesn't use a head of lettuce but rather gets it in a bag, for example), but none of them are from stuff that has been done off camera before the show starts. She starts with all items as if you bought them directly from the store. She doesn't even have them laid out beforehand on the counter but has them tucked away where you would have them: In the refrigerator, in the cupboard, in the drawer. She starts with a cold oven and empty pots on a cold stove. On more than one occasion you can see her rummaging around in a drawer trying to find a spatula that she has forgotten she needs.

And still, it ends up done in just under 30 minutes. The secret is that she's got some decent knife skills and she knows exactly what she's doing. If you're not comfortable running your knife through a stalk of celery in less than 20 seconds or if you need to stop at every step to think about what needs to be done next, it's going to take you some time.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, if you watch her show, 30 Minute Meals, you can see that she does everything in real time with absolutely nothing prepped. She starts with a cold oven, empty pots on a cold stove, and with everything as if you were pulling it out of your pantry and refrigerator since that's where she's keeping it, too.

The secret is that she's got some decent knife skills and she knows exactly what she's doing. If you're not comfortable running your knife through a stalk of celery in less than 20 seconds or if you need to stop at every step to think about what needs to be done next, it's going to take you some time.

She's also got some good equipment. In 30 minutes, my pot of water is only starting to come to a boil.

Really? I've been forced by my wife to sit through her grating, hyperactive munchkin chef routine on dozens of occasions, and for most of them, she pulls something out of the fridge and says you should do the prep when you bring the food home from the store. Maybe in more recent seasons she has stopped cheating. Whatever the case, I think whether or not one washes and portions certain ingredients in advance isn't as much a factor as the other you cite, which is that she clearly worked in a professional kitchen for at least a decade and can dice an onion in about three seconds (and also learned the importance of mise en place). She also, despite my most fervent prayers, never slips and opens a vein.

Yes, she does talk about buying things like fresh herbs and getting them prepped for future use, but that is as a suggestion for having a well-stocked kitchen, not for what she is doing. If you watch the show, you see that she simply pulls a bunch of parsley out of the fridge, still in the plastic bag she would have put it in when it was bought from the store. But, I don't consider wrapping a bunch of herbs in a paper towel "prep" anymore than I consider unwrapping a stick of butter and putting it in a butter dish to be "prep."

If you read her 30 Minute Meals cookbook, she gives a list of what a well-stocked kitchen should have (a package of long, thin pasta, a package of short pasta, a package of long grain rice, chicken stock, beef stock, etc.) so that when it comes time to make dinner, you can easily make most anything you want because you already have the ingredients. That's the point behind her commentary about handling herbs: Buy them when you see them fresh in the store and buy a little more than you need so that you can put some away for later...and put it away in portions that you will use so you don't have to prep it later. She does try to give you tips during the show about how to use the particular meal as a technique for other dishes.

About the only other trick I've seen her do is the garbage bowl, which is actually a good idea no matter what: Rather than try to use the sink and the garbage can, etc., just get yourself a big bowl and throw everything you're not using into it: Cans you've opened, squeezed lemons, the cut off root and blossom ends of an onion along with its paper, etc. "Clean as you go" is a good idea, but clean into one spot. You can throw it all out in one go when you're done.

She has said in interviews that the idea for 30 Minute Meals came from her previous job as a demonstration chef. She would be working for a cookware manufacturer doing a demonstration at a mall or such and would need to put together something that showed a complete process but also not take too long. She's been doing the 30-minute schtick for quite some time and it is clear she is well-versed in it.

As for her personality (hand gesture), I (hand gesture) can understand (hand gesture) why some people find it annoying (hand gesture). But that's a question of presentation (hand gesture), not technique (hand gesture).

She's good at opening cans and using buzzwords, but she has no training, and if confronted with the idea of using NOTHING that's pre-prepared, she'd be lost. However, she does well, mainly because she is a TV personality, which means she doesn't need to actually be creative.

Remember that she started her "career" as a supermarket demonstration person. Essentially, she fried things in a pan and put them in tiny cups to sell product. That's it - no training necessary.

As a chef friend said, "You can eat it, but I wouldn't call it food."

I read elsewhere that her most recent cookbooks have sold less than the previous crop, so hopefully people are getting tired of her shtick. I think at the beginning, she was decent, but I leafed through some of her recent books and found that they were rehashes of old recipes, just with different ingredients, and the ingredient lists are getting VERY, very long, making the dishes insanely expensive, not appropriate for "busy cooks who work all day" blah blah.

As for her prep, she will use things like chopped onions or pre-shredded carrots or lettuce, but she is also very fast with a knife. Speed on tasks like these are the key to getting dinner on the table faster, and making cooking regularly something one can stand. I don't advocate anyone doing Ray's recipes all the time, but quicker knife skills and getting the hang of other basic skills so that you can do them quickly are very good to know.

...and it's all about practise. I'm improving, but I still have a Batman bandaid on my left middle finger from the other day, when I lost a fight between an onion and my chef knife.

Sigh.

Am I the only person who uses my food processor? I NEVER slice things anymore,and can do a rough chop for cubes of stuff after I have run it through the processor's slicing blade. Quick as a wink!