— Steve Koziatek

Sort of a philosophy or philosophy, um, that we call clean as you go. And this is definitely something that is emphasized in professional kitchens, and of course, it applies to the home kitchen. And my basic approach, uh, at home is to start out by cleaning the, uh, area where, uh, dishes would be washed and, and set to dry or staged, you know, in some way. So the sink itself, and then the area of the counter off to the side where you might, let's say, typically set some things out to dry, usually within reach, uh, is gonna be the dishwasher that will be emptied out. You know, any things will be put away first. So you have an empty, um, staging area in the way of your dishwasher. Uh, you know, the two or three racks that you might have, and the clean as you go, philosophy is, uh, to reuse any of your utensils or cookware, uh, that you possibly can during the process of cooking. So, you know, you've, you've stirred something, you've whisked something, you're done with that utensil, take 15 seconds or so. Sometimes it's less, doesn't have to be a whole lot more than that, and at least rinse it off. A lot of times if we just rinse it off, it's fine for using, again, it's not, in other words, it's not always necessary to give it a, um, a a good hard scrub with soap and water. So, but, you know, think about what it is, right, that, uh, you're gonna be transitioning to next. And then once that thing, whether it's a pan or a whisk or something else, you know, is wrist rinsed off or sometimes cleaned, right? With soap and water, it's gonna go immediately off to the side, um, but still within a reasonable reach, right? For, um, drying or just sitting. And, you know, if there are things, of course, that you'd know you're not gonna need or probably not gonna need for the rest of your, your cooking adventure, go ahead and just set 'em in the dishwasher, uh, so that they're more out of the way and they can go ahead and start the air drying process. But, um, you gotta get into the mindset of taking every window of, you know, you know, 15 seconds of downtime to clean things. And, um, certainly keeping an eye on the food is important. Giving it a stir is important. Adjusting the heat is important. Um, but right in with that mix is gonna be cleaning things at every opportunity. And, um, then, you know, when you need something, you're not gonna pull it a fresh something out of the drawer or cupboard. You're gonna go to that landing space next to the sink and pick up that thing that you, uh, you know, used 10 or 15 minutes earlier. Okay? So that's the cycle, that's the routine that you want to get into, and it becomes this really nonstop orchestrated, um, performance, um, of cooking, cleaning, uh, tending to your food, cleaning and so forth.