15 Minute Recipes

As many of you know, I'm currently working on 100 new 15 minute recipes for a new, expanded edition of my book 15 Minute Low-Carb Recipes. I thought perhaps a quick run-down of some of the basic principles of 15 minute recipe creation might be useful.

* You won't be using your oven. Even if a recipe needs less than 15 minutes baking time, you have pre-heating time to deal with. This means, among other things, that 15 minute recipes are great for summer.

* On the other hand, there are some small kitchen appliances that really help. The microwave, of course, is great for steaming vegetables, melting things, cooking bacon, and cooking many sorts of fish. I also often use it to bring liquids like broth or cream up to a boil while I saute other ingredients in a saucepan. This lets me make soups very rapidly.

* The tabletop contact grill -- you know, the sort of thing George Foreman popularized -- cooks very fast because it cooks from both sides simultaneously. Works for burgers and chops, of course, but also for vegetables.

* The food processor is an essential part of 15 minute cuisine, not just because it chops things quickly, but because it lets you chop several ingredients at the same time. A useful trick to learn is putting the ingredients that need to be most finely chopped in the food processor first, pulsing a few times, then adding ingredients that need to be chopped a bit more coarsely and chopping again.

* When cooking in a skillet -- something I do a lot in quick cookery -- using a "tilted lid" is helpful. What do I mean? Cover your skillet but leave a crack. This holds in heat and allows quicker cooking, but still lets steam escape. Too, my Techniques cookware from QVC came with flat lids; these are great for setting directly on top of a burger, chicken breast, or chop to reflect heat back and make it cook faster. I do this often with meats that I want well-cooked all the way through. For this, I use a lid smaller around than the diameter of my pan, so it sits right on the meat. (If you use a traditional domed lid it the rim will sit down around your steak or chop, and create a different sort of cooking that the open-sided cooking I get with a flat lid.)

* Sounds obvious, but if you want to cook quickly, thinner cuts of meat beat thicker cuts of meat. Two-inch-thick pork chops are delicious, but they're not likely to be done in our time frame. Half-inch thick pork chops, however, are a breeze. Chicken on the bone won't cook in fifteen minutes except in a microwave. Boneless, skinless chicken pounded out to an even 1/4-1/2" easily cooks within our time limit. The thirty seconds per serving it takes to beat a chicken breast into submission can save you five minutes in cooking time.

* Along these lines, meatloaf takes an hour or more, but burgers work well, especially in the aforementioned contact grill. Many of my burger recipes started as meatloaves.

* Cutting stuff up into bits speeds things up, too; it's hard to take more than fifteen minutes cooking a stir-fry. Kebabs can take a bit longer, but still may work if you cut the chunks small enough.

* Fish fillets and most seafood cook in well under our fifteen minute limit. Whole fish may not.

* Don't forget eggs. An omelet turns all sorts of refrigerator flotsam into a great meal in no time flat. I've also written about how I like to throw a few fried eggs on top of all sorts of warmed over foods, particularly cauli-rice dishes and other vegetable sides, to turn them into a quick meal.

* Chicken livers should never be cooked anywhere near fifteen minutes! A few minutes is all they need. And they're yummy and super-nutritious.

* There are low carb and non-nasty convenience foods. Bagged salad, coleslaw mix, pre-cut vegetables, pre-cut melon chunks, sliced fresh mushrooms, already-crumbled cheese -- all of these work fine for us. Many frozen vegetables do, too, but watch out for sauces and blends with pasta or potatoes.

* I'm not above using pre-cooked chicken breast strips, smoked salmon, canned tuna, and the like. Yes, I look for the products with the fewest noxious additives. On the nutrition scale of 1-10, bagged salad with chicken breast strips and some pre-crumbled feta rates pretty darned high, even if it is made mostly of convenience foods. Would organic greens and free-range chicken be better? Sure. But there's a whole lot you could eat that would be worse.