Photo by: Aaron G Stock
Food Network is always showing competitions where cake or candy makers have 8 hours to make the most amazing whatever-it-is that they’re making. They’re not judged just on the finished product, but on how clean they work. Meaning, do they keep their work area clean while they’re working?
I usually work clean when I’m cooking. It’s a habit I picked up when I worked in a restaurant in college. There’s no way you cook for a 12 hour shift and wait until the end to clean everything up. You’d run out of dishes and counter space long before that.
I don’t work in a restaurant any more, but I’ve kept the habit … and it drives my wife absolutely nuts. She’s a just-cook-it-and-deal-with-the-mess-later type, and it drives me absolutely nuts. We’ve learned it’s generally best not to try to cook together.
I was talking to some people at a get-together over the weekend, and it turns out this situation is more common than I thought. And in my totally non-scientific sample, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation with gender. The women are just as likely to work clean — or not — as the men.
In favor of cleaning as you go:
- Only one or two dishes to wash when you’re done with dinner.
- Easier to wash dishes before food dries on.
- Don’t run out of clean dishes and silverware halfway through.
In favor of not cleaning as you go:
- Only get your hands wet once.
- “I’ll cook, you clean” is a really good deal.
- …
I’m sure there must be more than that, but I can’t think of it.
So what do you do? Why? And is your partner the same way? Pick an answer in the poll — if you can’t see the poll via email, come see it on the blog — but leave a comment if you’ve got a minute. I’m really curious if there’s a pattern to why people develop the different styles.
Loading ...Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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40 Comments
For me, it depends.
If I’m cooking dinner for the two of us, I’ll clean the dishes at the end. Unless the sink fills up and then I’ll clean them while I’m cooking. If I’m making cookies or something similar that requires huge bowls, then I’ll clean while I’m cooking.
In my case, it is a function of how many large containers are required as we don’t have a lot of counter space. So it’s a pragmatic choice and I’m not bothered if there are dishes in the sink for, say, 10 hours.
Now my wife, well she gets annoyed at me if I leave dishes in the sink overnight, so she’s definitely in the clean up quickly group…
Cheers,
Scott.
When I was disabled (20+ years) I had a deal with hubby and the kids. If I cooked, they would do dishes because my legs wouldn’t hold me up for the length of both activities. Unfortunately, that resulted in both my older children learning to cook messy. Not because I did, but because they viewed cooking and cleaning up as two separate activities, done by different people. I learned my lesson.
The rest of the gang is learning to cook clean like I do. I start with a clean counter and empty dishwasher and rinse and load as I go. The person doing dishes after the meal only has the plates and silverware for that meal.
Peggy, I like starting with a clean counter and empty dishwasher too. I don’t know which bugs me more: reaching for a bowl or utensil and it’s not there, because it’s sitting in the sink; or trying to put a hot pan in the sink and I can’t because it’s full of glasses.
Hey Drew,
first of all, as I did never comment yet – I’ve discovered your blog two or three weeks ago and I just LOVE it. Being a German student, I’ve got to admit that I’m not as “exposed” to fast-food culture as I imagine American youngsters to be, thus it’s nothing special or new to me to get “real food”-recipes. In a way, Mum cooks almost like your grandmother, with real tasty stuff.
Nevertheless, I love your recipes, even if I haven’t tried one of them yet. But I’m going to make mostly all of these one day, for sure! 
So keep going, I like the way you describe and explain things and all. And I’m sure it’s quite special for an American to be so keen to cook traditionally, isn’t it? 
So, secondly, in order to answer your question: It depends. I voted for “Clean as I go”, but when I’m cooking, this is not always true. I clean everything I don’t need anymore, that means that if I’m doing Pasta and I’m serving it in the pot (which I usually do if it’s just for my family), of course I can’t clean it before having eaten.
But what I always do is cleaning up before things are finished when I’m baking. When things go into the oven, I start cleaning the kitchen. I’m not the kind of girl that lets her dirty stuff stand around when she could be cleaning it.
So mainly, it depends on whether I’m cooking or baking – but I think that still makes me belong to the “clean quickly”-group.
I learned to cook clean because I lived in a series of apartments with TINY kitchens–one even had NO counters pace. I’d balance the chopping board over the pan and scrape it in while I worked…
I used to work pretty clean, but for the past few years I’ve been living in an apartment without a functional water heater and the only instant hot water I have is in the shower. Washing dishes requires heating several kettles of water, so it generally only happens once a day at best.
I’m very much a cook THEN clean person. Honestly I’d never even considered that there might be another way to do it. Now I’m thinking this may be a habit worth changing. We’ll see how this goes. Hopefully it will translate into the dishes being done more often.
Seems that lately I have been more of a “clean before I cook” … Must admit that the last few weeks I have not really felt like doing the dishes so they have piled up … in the sink.. on the counters… on the stove..LOL
I voted for clean after dinner…but only b/c my 14-year-old does the after-dinner cleaning.
My grandmother had the gift of cleaning as she went, so that only the serving dishes and eating dishes remained dirty. I sort of split the difference — I rinse and stack, rather than either washing mid-dinner-prep or just making a mess for later. Back in the days when I didn’t have a dishwasher (i.e. most of my adult life) I did actually do dishes as I cooked, but the dishwasher gives me the luxury of making a mess.
My hubby rarely cooks, but when he does, he tends to tidy up as he goes (if he doesn’t get in a hurry). He often tidies up as I cook, though, which is awesome for both of us.
I definitely clean as I go mostly because the cleaning is so much easier before the food dries and sticks. I have lots of counter space but I have a problem with it looking messy while I’m cooking – I feel like the more sterile and clean it looks, the more comfortable anyone watching me cook will be with eating the food, although they usually know better than to complain, and I can assure you my cooking is high quality and clean. I’m maybe a little OCD about it, but I don’t think it’s a bad habit to develop. I have been known to make sure all my cookware is clean before I will start eating just because I really love eating in a clean kitchen (I have a great bar we love to eat at.)
And while we’re at it, where in the heck did you put the salt?! It was Right Here!
I thought you were done with it.
Well, I’m NOT done with it. You are Killing Me!!!!!!!!!
You and my husband would get along very well, Drew!
What a funny topic!! I’m one of the two who voted for the last one: “Clean as … Now CUT THAT OUT. You’re being extra messy just to piss me off, aren’t you?” It’s totally true, but in a fun way — it’s the running joke of the house that just as I’ve finished washing dishes and I’m washing down the sink, hubby comes along and sets a dirty glass on the counter NEXT TO the sink. At least I’m nice about doing it to him… I’ll distract him with a kiss while the sneaky clang of silverware resonates from the sink.
Betty, you’re definitely a “clean as you go”. You’d have to be a magician to clean the pot with the food still in it.
Jenny and Kee, apartment living is actually pretty good training for working in a restaurant. I’ve seen professional kitchens that are smaller than the home kitchens you see people putting in on home renovation TV shows.
Karli, good luck with that.
Bill, I didn’t even think to put a “clean before you cook option on there. Oops.
Suzanne, that’s cheating and you know it. (PS: I think I’ll be trying your lemon cake recipe.
Linda, I always at least rinse as I go. Which is why I need to start from a clean kitchen, or there’s no place to do the rinsing.
Lance, it depends on what I’m having. If it’s a roast or something that needs to rest before I cut it, I’ll wash what I can. If it’s something like fettucini alfredo that’s best when it’s just finished, I’ll wait until after to do the past pot.
Jenni, that’s next week’s poll.
Jennifer, I’m easily distracted by kisses.
I used to be a ‘Cook now, deal with it later’ but, 8 months of culinary school completely changed that.
What made me see the difference is that, as a class, it would make a huge difference in how early we could be done school if we cleaned as we go, rather then a sprint cleaning at the end. (Especially when class is done at 9, and you clean for an hour.)
I can generally manage it now so that cleaning things while I cook does not slow me down, but I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to learn on my own in a kitchen.
I’m glad I do it, now!
This reminds me of a poem by humorist Richard Armour –
TEAMWORK
A splendid team, my wife and I
She washes dishes and I dry.
I sometimes pass her back a dish
To give another cleansing swish.
She sometimes holds up to the light
A glass I haven’t dried just right.
But mostly there is no complaint
Or it is courteous and faint,
For I would never care to see
The washing job consigned to me,
And though the things I dry still drip,
She keeps me for companionship.
It depends. With baking, I tend to clean up all the bowls at the end- typically they go in the sink and are filled with water to soak and make my life easier, but I don’t clean all that immediately. I usually wait to do that until it’s all finished baking, so that washing it all by hand is easier (and usually it’s only a couple bowls and a sheetpan). However, with cooking, I tend to get bowls and pans into the sink and/or clean them as I go- especially since I use a cast iron skillet. That always gets cleaned immediately while it’s warm. That way, when I’m done laboring over the meal, I don’t have to worry about 3 pans, 2 bowls and a number of spoons.
I voted clean as I go. I do all the cooking and cleaning up after around these parts except for the occasional weekend breakfast my hubby does. Nothing drives me more insane than a cluttered work area! Things just flow better when I don’t feel like stabbing anyone.
) lol
“Things just flow better when I don’t feel like stabbing anyone.”
Ha! I think this sums it up, thanks April! You just made my day, I think I’ll be snickering to myself all evening.
Drew, I picked the “Clean as I—–…” option. Hubby and I are opposite of you and your Wife! I am a clean as you go maniac, and he likes to leave pasta on the bottom of pans to solidify into impossible to remove gray hair inducing pasta cement.
He leaves cast iron pans to “season” for days if I don’t intervene, lol! Luckily for him, he is GREAT in the kitchen and worth every last irritating mess. I am the baker, he is the chef, so we work in shifts and avoid being in the same kitchen at the same time without an arsenal of wine for me and beer for him! Works like a charm. I like to clean as I go due to small kitchens and cake equipment being all hand wash only. I hate that! Cleaning as I go ensures I have a small batch of hand wash only’s while baking instead of a HUGE mountain along with all the multitude of spoons, cups, bowls and gadgets hehe.
That, and I have officially proclaimed my refusal to wash *certain* pans we own that he likes to dirty up and leave for me to sandblast. You know, like that gigantic saucepan he uses to cook three tiny eggs in haha! Gotta love him though, he does have my heart. Great post, sorry for the last comment!
Jessie aka Jemoiselle
There is nothing I feel like doing less after dinner than cleaning up a big cooking mess! This is how both my mother and grandmother cooked and even as a kid it drove me crazy. I think my 4H cooking teacher impressed me so and she was a “Clean As You Go” person so I followed her great example. My husband I strongly suspect is a “Deal With It Later” kind of guy just seeing what a mess he can make with a bowl of cereal is scary enough! Thanks great poll.
Alright I have the same situation as Drew does except it is my lovely husband who is the messy man. I cook and bake clean as do my daughters however my son is just like my husband..although after there is no clean up..he adhers to the “What you talking bout Willis?” of there is no mess if you leave the room..lol.
I’m stealing that line: “There is no mess if you leave the room.” Was that in Calvin and Hobbes?
I apologize, Drew, but I wanted to make a comment on your newsletter article about school lunches and I didn’t know where to do it. That’s why I’m commenting here.
I am a lunch lady at my local public school. What you said in your newsletter about schools not wanting to hire people to actually COOK, is correct. They don’t want to SPEND THE MONEY on employees taking all the time it would take to make things from scratch, or even partially from scratch.
The school I work for serves about 1000 (maybe a little less) students. We cook all of the food at one school and then it gets transported to all of the other schools (elementary, middle school). Currently we don’t even “technically” have a head cook, a lady is filling in for the head cook position until they (the school/our boss) figures out what to do. Almost everything we cook is already pre-manufactured….out of a box/can, add water, etc.
Sometimes we’ll serve something like “goulash” which is made with hamburger, noodles, seasonings, tomato sauce….that’s about the closest we get to making anything “from scratch”.
Schools do not want to spend the money it would take to have employees in the kitchen cooking healthy meals, it would take too much time, too many hours. With all the budget cuts, it’s much cheaper to just buy stuff that can be slapped on a pan and cooked. I don’t like it, but that’s a fact.
Since I started working at this job (about three years ago) we’ve had about 4 employees either quit or retire and none of those positions were filled by anyone. The rest of us have just had to adapt and keep going.
Another thing that is unbelievable to me is the commodities we get from the government! It’s CRAP! Sometimes we get meat and one wonders what is in it! We’ll get stuff from the government that doesn’t have an ingredient list on it! We got bags and bags of trail mix recently….nuts, fruits etc (pretty healthy in this case, actually) except that there were NOWHERE on the boxes or bags that told a person what exactly was in the trail mix! I do need to give credit however, several times we have received whole wheat dried pasta/noodles to use. But in most cases, what we receive in commodities looks like someones rejects.
I’m not sure what the answer is….especially with all the budget cuts schools are making. It’s a vicious cycle, however, ‘cuz the more crap food you feed the kids, the more behavior problems you’re going to have. And what about what the kids eat at home? I guess one could say that if you feed them well at breakfast and lunch for nine months, it’s kind of like building on a solid foundation? Maybe that will plant seeds for healthier eating and living in the rest of their lives when they’re not at school? I don’t know the answers, I just know it’s frustrating.
Jo, if you don’t mind I’m going to reprint this as a blog post next week.
I’m a real clean as you go type unless I’m in a big hurry. I hate having to do a pile of dishes before bedtime because I couldn’t get to them earlier! (And I have a serious guilt complex about leaving them otherwise, though I will do it when necessary.) My husband is a wonderful cook–but a horrendous mess in the kitchen! There just isn’t enough room for him to cook and me to clean while he’s doing it, even though I still try to. Worse yet, it seems like he can use every dish, bowl, or pot in the kitchen at times.
Definitely cook and then clean. Drives my husband nuts. Until I met him, I’d never known anyone who cleans as they cook. I hate it when I’m ready to eat and he says, “I just want to do these dishes.” No – eat the darn food while it’s hot!
The kitchen where I learned to cook had a separate section for the dishes. The dishwasher’s job was to constantly scan for dirty dishes and make them disappear and then reappear clean as quickly as possible. So when I was learning to cook, I came to expect that my dirty strainer, spoon, pot, etc. would disappear as soon as I put it down.
It made for bad habits, because cooking and cleaning are irrevocably separate in my mind.
You left out one option. Cook first with the plan of cleaning later, but by then too tired. I think I’ll adopt your clean while you cook method, because my way sure isn’t working for me.
I always clean as I go, because I’m forever playing cooking show in my head while I cook. Is that a shocking revelation for a 34-year-old woman to make??? That’s right, World, each and every time I prepare food, I pretend that I am Julia Child or Rachel Ray or The Barefoot Contessa. What of it?
FruHubs, on the other hand, makes as big a mess as he possibly can so he can watch me suffer in “I cook, you clean” purgatory.
I clean first – make sure the dishwasher is empty, my countertops are sanitized etc, then clean as I go.
I hate a pile of dishes to do at the end of a dinner when really I want to pop a button on my jeans and lay on the couch….. lol
PS: Frugal Hostess – we have a little “window” from the kitchen to the dining room. I entertain the kids/friends with my “cooking show” done with a fake posh Julia Child accent.
Sometimes I do Rachael Ray. Or Emeril. I think I’m hilarious. Others… well… they just like watching me make an ass of myself.
I cook and then clean afterwards. My hub cleans as he goes. He also won’t cook if the kitchen isn’t clean….he’ll clean first and then cook. It has to be something from childhood, because his mom’s kitchen is small so clutter stops the whole cooking process. I’ve always had a big kitchen where I could push stuff out of the way and deal with it later….or the next day. (One other thing to note is that I have ALOT of plates and silverware, so it’s not a necessity for me to clean them in order to feed the crowd.)
I forgot to ask……that picture. Who in the world is tall enough to put their microwave on top of their fridge?!
Wow, lots of input on this one, Drew! I’ve often thought the Food Network should, in conjunction with HGTV, produce a show that shows people how to “organize” a kitchen to enable the home cook to “produce” the recipes they see on TV! And part of that would be to teach people how to cook in a clean kitchen! lol
So, have you guessed it yet? Yep! I’m a Clean as You Go cook! I cannot tolerate a messy kitchen. Dust can accumulate to an inch thick elsewhere in the house… but my kitchen will be spotless! No waterspots on my sink… they’re wiped as soon as they happen. No lost pot holders… they’re put immediately in the drawer by the stove… never left on a counter to disappear under something when an emergency requires its use!
I hate dishwashers… inevitably, what I want is in it and not clean! And then you have ALL those dishes to put away at one time! Nope. My dishwasher is a jar storage unit until I have enough accumulated clean jars to put away til canning season!
My mother and her mother were clean as you go… and yet my sister (closest to me in age) is the complete opposite! Her kitchen is a complete wreck (looks worse than the one in your picture)… Go figure…
It depends a lot on the situation for me. When I’m just cooking for myself, a one-person meal doesn’t generate much mess, and I eat pretty fast, so leaving the dishes until the end isn’t a big deal. But, when I’m cooking a large meal or baked goods that involve multiple dishes, I tend to clean up as I go. I have a tiny kitchen, so large-scale cooking forces me to clean up as I go or I would quickly run out of countertop! It helps that my mother taught me to put away ingredients as I go, and to never save the dishes for later. Another benefit of cleaning as you go is that when cooking for company, the kitchen is already pretty much clean when they arrive!
I think I touched a nerve.
I’ll admit to leaving things in the dishwasher a little longer than I probably should. I hate running it half full, and I’d rather put all the dishes away at once. Putting four dishes on the stack is just as easy as putting one dish on the stack, right?
I clean as I go, usually…but now that I have 2 kids old enough to do dishes, it is SO tempting to leave the mess for the end on their “dish nights.” However, old habits die hard.
My husband and kids are all “deal with it later” people. I hate it when they invade my kitchen.
I sometimes TRY to clean as I go…that’s what my mother always tried to teach me, anyway. She is a cleaning fanatic; my dad was always complaining that she would “clean stuff away” when he still needed it out! SHE always complained that he made the biggest mess possible in the kitchen just to irritate her (sound familiar?).
I tend to get so caught up in my cooking–I often have multiple dishes going at once–that I can’t tear myself away to clean as I go. Well, I probably could, but I’m easily distracted so I don’t! It drives my husband crazy. Every time he cooks, when he’s finished he says, “See, no dishes! Now we can sit down and enjoy our meal and relax the rest of the night.” I, on the other hand, say “I am perfectly capable of relaxing with a sink full of dishes, why aren’t you?!” It doesn’t necessarily bother me that he cleans as he goes, and I can see the benefits and honestly try sometimes…what bugs me is him harping on me constantly while I’m trying to cook! It’s a never-ending battle.
Not only do I “work clean”, but I have to clean off everything BEFORE I start. My hubby is the exact opposite, and I HATE it. He always comes to me and whines that we need more bowls/dishes/silverware, and the bitching from me about how he’s a complete slob starts.
He’s learned not to whine at me, and I’ve learned not to be anywhere NEAR the kitchen when he’s cooking. Saves us the trouble of a divorce.
My wife is an obsessive clean-as-you-go person and I’m not. When she’s there while I’m cooking it’s great, because she’ll wash while I’m cooking, but if she’s not there you can count on her cleaning everything before we sit down to eat. And if the dishwasher is clean, I might as well put my labor of love in the fridge to be reheated once the kitchen is back to equilibrium. Needless to say I’ve developed a hybrid clean-as-you-go, emptying the dishwasher before dinner, rinsing everything immediately after it’s done being used, and saving the hand-washing for the end (for some reason I don’t trust my dishwasher with my shiny new pots). This way I can increase my chances of eating food piping hot off the stove.
I’ve also noticed that the more prep you do ahead of time, the easier it is to keep everything clean. You have a lot more down time and it’s a lot more relaxing when you’re not scrambling to find the thyme in your vast ocean of spices.
Seth, the lowered stress level is one of my biggest reasons for wanting to always start with a clean kitchen. Once you let things start stacking up, it spins out of control really fast.