Music for the kitchen on a weeknight

Cooking for yourself on a weeknight is a different brief from cooking on a weekend. There's less time and less love for the process. The point is dinner, not the rite of dinner. Music has to handle that without making the kitchen feel sad.

Lo-fi is mostly what works. It has a rhythm to chop to, doesn't demand attention, survives the extractor fan. Anything more ambitious fights the speed of the meal. Anything more relaxed makes the chopping feel like a chore.

Avoid anything you'd sing along to. You'll catch yourself stopping to listen, the pan will smoke, and you'll be eating later than you wanted. Avoid anything with sudden energy. The kitchen is full of sharp things and hot oil, and you want the music to be the calm side of the room.

This is one of the moments where a great playlist is mostly invisible to the cook. They put it on, the meal gets made, the room sounded like a kitchen. The music did its job and didn't ask to be thanked.