According to me, there are 3 types of cooks - experienced, passionate and smart. I think the combo of these traits would make for an extremely formidable chef. Years of cooking and love for food has made sure that I have a passable attendance in the first two categories. With some major changes in our lives last couple of years, the precious commodity called "Time" (or the lack of it!) is forcing me to make additional efforts in the "smarts" department. Planning menu for the week, prepping foods ahead and adopting techniques/recipes that take minimal effort has been my go to tactic in recent years. This process has made some startling revelations. The seemingly inconsequential aspects of cooking, that I took for granted, added up to quite a formidable amount of time on a weekly basis.

For example, how long do you think making a Tadka (tempering dishes with spices) takes? Just 5 minutes you say? Yes? Now throw in additional 3-4 minutes of cleaning that splattered mustard all over the place. Tadka easily contributes to dirty, greasy stove. smelly hair, sensitive smoke alarms ..and the list goes on.  So that takes the total to approximately 10 minutes (esp. if you use cast iron that takes time to heat up!). So that's roughly 30 minutes each day for 3 meals. So in a week that's quite a few hours for just tempering + cleaning! Can you see how the minutes dwindle away in plain sight? Let's now consider making a big batch of Tadka (whatever type you choose); which by the way takes you about 5 minutes to last a generous number of dishes- no kidding! You just exchanged a bunch of hours to FIVE MINUTES with NO CLEANING! That's SMART cooking people, or in other words OPOS Cooking. Let's see how we do this.