November 4, 2019
Rouxbe seeks to bring confidence to cooks in the kitchen, providing foundational skills to help make preparing home-cooked meals easier and more efficient than ever
A new survey by Rouxbe, the leading online culinary school, found that time is the top barrier to cooking more at home, followed by not having enough space, not having people to cook for, and needing better kitchen tools. Interestingly, while barriers exist, the majority of people cook most of their meals at home: of the over 2,000 respondents, nearly 3 in 5 individuals eat dinner at home at least 4 nights a week.
“As a society we seem busier than we’ve ever been, so it’s no surprise that time rose to the top as the key barrier to cooking at home,” said Ken Rubin, Chief Culinary Officer at Rouxbe. “What many people overlook, however, is that the greater your culinary skills, the less time it takes to get a meal on the table. When we can pull dinner together without a recipe, improvise if we don’t have a certain ingredient, or handle mishaps quickly and efficiently, cooking becomes second nature. The key is to obtain these baseline skills, which is what Rouxbe courses hope to instill.”
The top-cited benefits of cooking at home are significant and include saving money, eating healthier, and spending more quality time with friends and family. These results are in line with current trends. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average household spends almost half of their food budget on eating out. As for cooking at home leading to healthier options, portion size is a key issue here. Even for those choosing healthy options, most restaurants serve portions that are two to three times larger than the U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommended portions.
When it comes to how individuals learned how to cook, lessons passed down from family top the list with over two-thirds of respondents noting that a close relative’s kitchen is where they honed their skills. Just over 20 percent taught themselves through blogs, videos, and cookbooks.
While just 3 percent noted that they never learned how to cook, 18 percent cited not knowing how to cook as a barrier to cooking more at home, revealing a disconnect, likely due to learning some, but not sufficient, skills in the kitchen.
“Family traditions and recipes passed down are wonderful, but they don’t often provide key culinary foundations that can make cooking second nature, especially as the way we eat and cook continues to shift with each generation,” continued Rubin. “There is still a clear need to learn basic, fundamental skills that can be applied to everyday cooking.”
Having people to cook for came in as the number three as a reason people don’t cook more at home. With the number of people living alone increasing significantly over the second have of the last century, this makes some sense. In fact, in large cities across the country, almost half of households have just one resident. For Boomers, this is felt even more dramatically, as it is cited as the No. 2 reason they don’t cook more.
“Knowing how to cook builds confidence in the kitchen, which leads to a desire to cook more often for loved ones. In turn, learning how to cook can be fun, and once you have the skill, you will likely want to do it more on your own.”
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About Rouxbe
Rouxbe, the world’s leading online culinary school, was founded in 2005 to train people of all abilities to become better, more confident – even healthier – cooks in kitchens around the world. With high definition videos, world-class instructors, peer support and interactive assignments, Rouxbe has set the bar as the new standard in culinary education, providing certificate-level instruction not only to quality restaurants and hospitality organizations but also to serious home cooks and career changers. Rouxbe’s revolutionary online platform delivers cutting edge e-learning solutions that drive and measure learning outcomes and engagement while providing effective, lower-cost alternatives for training professional cooks. Over 110 hours of foundational training are available in English, Spanish, French, Mandarin and Arabic to hundreds of thousands of cooks in 180 countries. Rouxbe programs are also recognized by both the American Culinary Federation Education Foundation and by WorldChefs as approved training programs.
For more information and the latest news about Rouxbe, please visit http://www.rouxbe.com.
