Grumble about recipe prep times

[klmama]

Have you noticed the quick prep time listed on recipes?  They don't ever seem to count the prep time needed to cook and cube the chicken breast or to dice the veggies or to do any other time-consuming work.  They only count the time it takes once everything is ready to go.  A clue to the recipe writers:  unlike the famous folk who cook online or on TV, we don't have kitchen staff to prepare everything for us to stir together.  We need to count the time it takes to do it all.  So 10 minutes to prep a recipe that involves dicing multiple root veggies is absolutely not going to have an accurate count.  Tell us the hard truth.  We can take it.

 

 

[KungFuPanda]

I'm pretty sure "prep time" is just cooking time once your ingredients are ready to go.  No two people take the same amount of time to prep, so there's no real way to accurately gauge that.  Person A may slice everything in their cuisinart in 1 minute while person B may take 10 minutes to find the paprika and person C just buys the veggies already cut up from the grocery salad bar.