Kitchen Timing Basics: Why Recipe Times Are Only a Starting Point

Recipe times are written for one kitchen: the author's. Yours has a different pan, a different hob, different altitude and different-sized eggs. A timer is still the most useful tool in the kitchen, but the number you put into it should be adjusted, not copied.

The four things that shift a cooking time

Carryover heat. Food keeps cooking after it leaves the heat — a thick steak can rise several degrees while it rests. Pull it early and let the rest period finish the job; the steak timer is built around this.

Altitude. Water boils below 100°C as you go up, so anything boiled takes longer. Above roughly 1,000 metres, add a few minutes to pasta, rice and eggs and expect to adjust again the first time you cook a dish.

Pan and pot mass. A heavy cast-iron pan holds heat and recovers quickly; a thin one drops temperature the moment food hits it, which lengthens the real cooking time even though the recipe says otherwise.

Starting temperature. Fridge-cold eggs, meat or dough all need longer than room-temperature ones. This is the single most common reason a recipe time "doesn't work".

Rough starting points

• Soft-boiled egg, fridge-cold, large: about 6 minutes — egg timer
• Hard-boiled egg: about 9 to 10 minutes
• Dried pasta, al dente: package time minus 1 minute — pasta timer
• White rice, absorption method: 12 minutes cook, 10 minutes rest — rice timer
• Black tea: 3 to 5 minutes; green tea: 2 to 3 — tea timer
• Espresso extraction: 25 to 30 seconds — barista timer

Cooking several things at once

The hard part of a full meal is not any single time, it's the overlap. Work backwards from when everything should land on the table, then start each dish at its own offset. The multiple timers page runs several named countdowns in one tab so each dish gets its own alarm, and the routine builder can save a sequence you cook often.

Make sure you hear it

A one-shot beep is easy to miss over an extractor fan. Every Tickline alarm loops until you dismiss it, and the loud alarm timer is tuned for a noisy kitchen. On a phone propped by the hob, the screen also stays awake while a timer runs.