How many hours do you spend actually cooking each week?

[Spryte]

Cooking in this case would include any meal or snack prep, even if it's not technically cooked. 

 

This will vary greatly, I'm sure, especially if you bake your own bread, etc.  

 

Just curious.  I'd like to cut down on our kitchen hours but not sure it's reasonable.

[Annie G]

Does cleaning up the kitchen after a meal count or are you just looking for cooking/prep time?

 

[Spryte]

Does cleaning up the kitchen after a meal count or are you just looking for cooking/prep time?

 

I was just thinking of actual cooking/prep, but if you want to include clean up - that's fine, too.  :)

[TammyinTN]

At least 1 1/2 hours daily except on leftover nights...I love leftover nights.  ;)

[FaithManor]

Too many. Teenage boys think they need seven courese meals all.the.time.!

[Annie G]

Food prep/active cooking time only:

 

Breakfast- 10 minutes per day, for me and dh only.  Our adult children rarely eat breakfast but might grab a bagel. 

 

Lunch- 10 to 15 minutes per day active time. Dh comes home for lunch and I fix lunch for us. If an adult kid wants what I'm having, that's fine. Usually they are either gone or fix their own. 

 

Dinner- generally everyone is home and I spend 30-60 minutes making dinner. 

 

Clean up would easily add 50% to those times. 

 

When our kids were young, breakfast and lunch prep times were easily double what they are now, and clean up was much longer also. 

[jenslp]

Around 10-14 usually

[BarbecueMom]

A lot. Between cooking, prepping, cleaning up, and all the interruptions that come with it, I'm in the kitchen for at least 3-4 hours a day. Plus eating. A "quick meal" usually takes me an hour or more to prepare because of small, unhelpful helpers and a "mom only - no substitutes" baby under foot. I have two other adults that help out in the kitchen. It doesn't cut down on the time spent in there.

 

I really need to start doing more from scratch now that I have a working oven, but I'm afraid I'd have to give up laundry and showering to find the time.

[Pawz4me]

I'd say an average of 90 minutes on weekdays.  Maybe 30 minutes on weekends since we almost always eat dinner out on Saturday and Sunday.  A few caveats, though -- I do a lot of cooking from scratch, but I'm not nearly as against using a bit of convenience foods as some on here probably are.  I don't think it's a dietary disaster if we have Hamburger or Chicken Helper once every couple of weeks. ;)  And except for birthdays and holidays we don't eat desserts other than fruit.  Nor do we eat enough bread for me to consider making it.  So not much time spent on baking.

[BlessedMom]

Between 12 and 14 hours on a regular daily basis.

[Upennmama]

Probably 2 hours per day? I think around 15-20 minutes making breakfast, 30 minutes making lunch, and an hour or so on dinner. It can vary- some nights are a little faster. Those prep times include (usually) prepping other food items, like making a batch of hard boiled eggs for the next day's snacks, along with making lunch, or making a batch of bread. 2 hours is probably the outside. My kids do most of the after-meal cleaning up, loading the DW, etc, but I do any deep cleaning, like cleaning walls, mopping, scrubbing the oven, etc. 

[SKL]

On average, between 20 and 30 minutes per day.  It's amazing my kids are alive.  :P

[Cosmos]

Around 10-14 usually

 

That sounds about right for me too. I often listen to TC lectures while I cook, and I can get through quite a few in a week.

 

Sometimes I do a lot of cooking, and sometimes I do less. Lately I've been doing less cooking and working in the the garden a lot. Even though I love to cook, it's hard to get back in the habit of spending so much time in the kitchen when it's so lovely outside. But eating simple food isn't really what we like for a long time. Tonight at least will be easy and delicious: hamburgers on the grill, baked beans (already in the crockpot), and corn on the cob.

[Guest]

Cooking dinner is almost always about an hour each day. I make most food from scratch. My kids now most often make their own lunches, but that would be another half hour per day. Breakfast could be fifteen minutes or so per day. So, about two hours per day, on average. In the course of a week, I might also bake something, so lets say about fifteen hours per week on average.

[Annie G]

When I baked bread it didn't add much time. Five minutes to measure ingredients and get the bread machine started, then a couple of minutes to punch the dough down and put it in the pan, then 30 second to pop it in the oven after it's risen, then another 30 seconds to take it out, dump it out of the pan, and butter the crust.   

 

Lately when I make bread I make focaccia and that takes even less time. 

 

What takes me a lot of time is salad prep- so I cut a bunch of stuff up at one time- and chopping veggies to saute.   But things like rice, broccoli, beans, etc. are super easy because they don't involve much active time. 

[Night Elf]

As little as possible. I'm just not a cook. I'd say my prep/cook time is about an hour each day. Dinner takes up most of that. I am not counting cleaning. I have two teens and they do breakfast and lunch on their own.

[Luckymama]

I probably spend 12-15 hours a week on food prep and cooking. (Mainly dinners--everyone does their own breakfast and lunches tend to be leftovers or something simple.) It's a hobby :D

 

Dh and whatever kid(s) is/are here do all the dishes and cleanup from dinner, though I clean up as I go during the day.

[Chelli]

Probably 13-15 hours a week.

[kitten18]

I would say 12-15 hours a week.

[rwjx2khsmj]

About 12 hours a week sounds right. I fix breakfast 2 or 3 mornings. Lunch is normally a fix it yourself deal. Dinner is usually from scratch and sometimes includes bread.

[soufflegirl]

An hour and a half or so per day, unless I'm making bread or canning something. Bread is probably 3 hours start to finish (although probably only 20 minutes of which I have to actively do something) and canning depends on what/how much I'm making.

[Soror]

I generally cook a hot meal for breakfast and supper, and try to serve leftovers or something easy for lunch. We are gluten free, pale (dh and I) and I cook from scratch. I would say 2ish hrs a day is average.

[KungFuPanda]

This week? Practically zero. I'm in an eating-out rut. I'm doing other things, but cooking just hasn't happened this week. Generally, I can keep us out of restaurants and the house livable if I devote an hour to the house and an hour to food each day. This includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and making tea twice daily.

 

The problem isn't the time it takes, it's staying organized. If I meal plan and have ingredients on hand, I can prep early while I still have some steam. Everything is easier this way. If I have to go to the store, it's still easy as long as I do it in the morning. If I wait until we're hungry for dinner to think about it we're risking yet another Chipotle run. Tonight it was La Madeline, but I'm attempting to clean the basement so I earned it. Still, had I prepped something early I would have spared us the 6 p.m. car scramble and about $30.

[LibraryLover]

6 hours a week, maybe. I don't do a lot of elaborate meals. I'm a peasant cook. Most of my time is spent washing, chopping and sautéing. Nothing crazy. Even if I include breakfast, scrambling eggs is a 5 minute job from start to finish, maybe 7 minutes if I grate or chop something into the mixture. Even getting a chicken into the oven takes only a few minutes. Pat dry, rub in olive oil, salt, pepper, stick an onion and/or lemon in the cavity.

[texasmama]

I think about a thousand...or maybe it just feels that way.

[kroe1]

Zero. I live with a bunch of grazers.

[Joyofsixreboot]

I cook from scratch and bake a lot so I'm guessing about 20/hr week.

[Bensmom]

This week? Practically zero. I'm in an eating-out rut. I'm doing other things, but cooking just hasn't happened this week. Generally, I can keep us out of restaurants and the house livable if I devote an hour to the house and an hour to food each day. This includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and making tea twice daily.

 

The problem isn't the time it takes, it's staying organized. If I meal plan and have ingredients on hand, I can prep early while I still have some steam. Everything is easier this way. If I have to go to the store, it's still easy as long as I do it in the morning. If I wait until we're hungry for dinner to think about it we're risking yet another Chipotle run. Tonight it was La Madeline, but I'm attempting to clean the basement so I earned it. Still, had I prepped something early I would have spared us the 6 p.m. car scramble and about $30.

This is me! It is the meal planning/organization that is my downfall. You want Braums banana splits for dinner tonight? I'm okay with that. It's fruit and dairy, so no worries.

[Wildiris]

Hours. I've never tabulated the hours I spend rolling out pie dough or mixing up pancake batter. I am a messy cook. It's just the way I cook, but it always looks like a cyclone came through the kitchen. Every dish is dirty; pans and bowls stacked with little saucers scattered about. I do try to wash as I go, but clean up takes longer than actual cooking.

I cook from scratch.

[Momof3littles]

I would guess 8-10, but that's just a guess. 

 

edited to add: I don't know how accurate I can be as I often have a bunch of stuff going a few days per week, then we reheat, reuse, etc. leftovers the other days.  A lot of what I cook doesn't necessarily require a huge amount of "hands on" time.  I do feel like I am a fairly messy cook and it takes forever to clean up at times. 

[PrairieSong]

It varies, but my cooking time is always several times longer than my family's eating time.

[LibraryLover]

I didn't calculate purchasing or picking times, boiling or baking times (not hands on), or cleanup.

[momacacia]

This is why I'm spending part of the next week or two bagging those crockpot freezer meals. I just don't think our school or health will survive otherwise. :-/

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I'm also in the 10-14/week crowd, not including clean up, though some of that time I am multi-tasking- loading dishwasher while giving a dish the occasional stir, overseeing copywork/math sheets while prepping lunch, etc.  I usually unload the dishwasher while breakfast cooks... that sort of thing. 

 

I would actually really enjoy cooking if I didn't feel like I should be doing ten things at once every time I'm in the kitchen.  lol. 

 

I will say my kids and dh are very appreciative eaters- they always go through the food like a plague of locusts and tell me they liked it (or rarely, go through the food like a plague of locusts even though they don't like it...).  I would hate to cook if I felt the time was wasted!