I know the standard advice is to wash dishes as you cook, but I never know when the cooking is passive enough to warrant doing dishes. If I stop staring at the thing I’m doing I get distracted and it burns.
What you're supposed to do is get your MISE EN PLACE, that means get your shit ready, prep all the ingredients, mince and dice whatever and get them into prep bowls, and then start cooking when everything is actually ready to be cooked.
If you want to do dishes while you're cooking,
the cooking is passive
adjust the heat, dawg, nothing should be burning in the 2-3 minutes it takes between stirring to wash something. If it is, you're cooking it too hot
When I say I get distracted, I don’t mean that I do something for 2-3 minutes and then come back. I completely forget I was cooking for sometimes long periods of time. Even if I’m still in the kitchen.
Timers dawg, timers, if shits on heat set a timer. At least in the 2-3 minutes you're trying to multi task if it goes off you'll have the chance to be like "what the fuck was that for OH MY GOD MY ONIONS"
I've heard of people setting themselves really short-term alarms, like 2 minutes or such. If you get one of those mechanical kitchen timers, you can set it up real quick and extend it, if you get back to the stove before it goes off.
Rinse as you go, especially for things you know will stick (cheese, eggs, sauces, etc.). You can still use the tool if needed, but it's a lot easier to clean later on if there's no dried food on it, and stuff rinses off really easily while still fresh (usually).
I can't manage to clean as I go either, but this has saved me a mountain of effort.
Hang on, if you're washing dishes before you are done cooking and long before you even set the table or start eating anything, what exactly is it that you are washing? One big knife and a chopping board? How did this become the standard advice?
My god you’re right. I’ve been wasting years of my life by leaving that one bowl with a bit of juice from some tomatoes at the bottom until later when I did the rest of the dishes. Think of how much I could have achieved in that time!
You’ve heard of the slow food movement? Sarcasm aside, I am advocating for the slow dishwashing movement. I am 100% serious about this. Well, maybe 75%. Or 45%. I am somewhat serious about this.
I get distracted when I leave the kitchen, so doing the dishes while waiting until the next cooking step is done fixes two problems for me: 1) I get less mess afterwards, 2) less destroyed food because I left the kitchen and forgot to check it.