How to Use the Recipe Time Optimizer Calculator
Putting a roast in the oven or a stew in the pressure cooker creates hands-off time where nothing needs your attention. Letting that window go to waste is a missed opportunity — using it to prep and cook a side dish can significantly shorten your total time in the kitchen. This calculator takes your main dish's wait time and your side dish's cooking time, then compares doing them one after another versus running them in parallel to show exactly how much time you save.
The key to parallel cooking is starting the longer, hands-off task first. Once the main dish goes into the oven or pressure cooker, start the side dish right away — if the side dish takes less time than the wait, your total time ends up almost equal to just the main dish's wait time. If the side dish takes longer, it becomes the deciding factor for your total time, but even then you still come out ahead of cooking everything sequentially.
In practice, finish any labor-intensive prep work before you start the main dish, put the main dish into the oven or pressure cooker, and begin the side dish immediately afterward. Following that order is what lets you actually capture the time savings this calculator shows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Once an oven or pressure cooker starts, it creates hands-off wait time that doesn't need constant attention. Using that window to prep and cook a side dish shortens your total time compared to doing everything one step after another.
In that case, the side dish becomes the bottleneck, and the part that exceeds the wait time still has to continue after the main dish is done. Even so, it's always faster than cooking everything sequentially.