Keep track of a recipe with several cooking stages
A practical way to organise preparation, separate sauces and ingredients that are added at different times.
Mark the stages before you start
Many archive recipes are not a single “put it all in” instruction. They cook potatoes first, add meat later or finish with tomatoes, herbs or a thickener. Read the entire method and make a short stage list before you switch on the appliance.
For each stage, write the ingredients being added and the stated time. Put “prepare separately” beside anything cooked in a saucepan or on a grill. This is particularly useful for the chicken chow mein recipe: its sauce is thickened separately while the chicken and vegetables cook. The sauce step should not disappear just because the main dish uses an Actifry.
Prepare additions in the order they are needed
Place the first ingredients together, then arrange later additions in their own bowls. Keep raw ingredients separate from anything ready to eat. Have the thickener and its mixing liquid ready before the stage where they are needed, rather than measuring them while the timer is running.
A heading such as “Sauce” in an ingredient list is a useful divider. It does not mean the sauce ingredients should automatically go into the main pan at the beginning. The method tells you when and where to use them.
Use one timer for the stage you are on
Our cooking timer is deliberately simple. Set the minutes for the current stage, start it and leave the page open. When that stage ends, follow the next instruction and reset the timer. Keep the appliance’s own timer in use as well.
A browser timer can stop making sounds if the device is asleep, the page is closed or the browser limits background activity. It is a reminder, not a safety system. Do not leave the appliance unattended because a page has a countdown. The recipe’s cooking mode can request that the screen stays awake where the browser supports it.
Keep cooking and waiting times separate
A marinade, a soak or a cooling stage may be longer than the actual cooking. It can still affect when dinner is ready. Include those stages in your plan, especially if the recipe says to marinate for several hours or chill a prepared mixture before shaping it.
Two things done at the same time should not automatically be added together when estimating the overall time. Conversely, two batches cooked one after another both need space in your schedule. We leave uncertain total times blank rather than presenting an unreliable promise.