Crowded kitchen making it tough to concentrate on that recipe that’s as long as a college textbook? Got home from work late and need to cook up something quick before your stomach eats itself? RealSimple.com has printed this great list of recipe steps that you can skip.

What’s better is that they offer substantial background on the reasoning behind the step and then they let their experts chime in on why its not necessary i.e.:

Instruction: Alternate wet and dry ingredients.
Why it’s done: Some say this is done to avoid a mess (adding large amounts of flour or liquid at one time would create clouds of dust or splatters). Others say adding flour at intervals means you beat it less, resulting in less gluten development and a more tender cake (glutens are strands of protein that give bread its structure; they form when flour gets wet and is then stirred).
Can you skip that step? Yes. Our experts disagreed on the exact way to incorporate flour and butter with liquid ingredients such as eggs and milk, but none insisted on a multiple-step program of alternating ingredients. The more flour you can mix into the butter and sugar before adding liquid, the less gluten development you’ll get, says Shirley D. Corriher, author of Cookwise , so dump in as much flour as possible before you add liquid.

Check out the site for more advice on things from whether or not to drain the excess liquid from a dip to why you can skip out on clarifying the butter if you’re short on time.

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