[samarthr1]

Perhaps because you will want to cook 4-5 things at the same time?

Aor of Indian households when preparing a traditional lunch will have 5-6 items (in the south, particularly in a Brahmin household, you will have one sambhar, one rasam, three vegetable currys, rice, and a fried item usually appalam). This entire meal takes three hours or so to prepare from scratch on my stove (a three burner lpg stove). Two more usable burners will cut this down to about 2 hours

[wutbrodo]

I am pretty amateur at cooking, and I use three burners most of the time that I'm making a proper meal. I'm pretty surprised to hear that this wouldn't be very common for the average cook.

[AmericanChopper]

What type of average cook? The average south Asian cook? The average Mexican cook? The average Chinese cook?…

[unmole]

> south, particularly in a Brahmin household, you will have one sambhar, one rasam, three vegetable currys

This is not even remotely typical.

[worik]

>> south, particularly in a Brahmin household, you will have one sambhar, one rasam, three vegetable currys

> This is not even remotely typical.

Digress!

What is typical?

It is always good to learn about people's lifestyles....

[unmole]

South India consists of fives states and one Union Territory, all with different languages, culture and culinary styles. A meal in a Brahmin household in Hyderabad will be very different to one in Chennai with probably only rice being the common feature. Curry is too generic to be a useful descriptor.

It's hard to make broad generalizations. But having been to all six divisions and having lived in three of them, I feel very confident in saying that a household that cooks three different curries, sambar and rasam for a single meal is very atypical. What GP described sounds closer to a restaurant set course meal and not something a household would cook on a day to day basis.

[AmericanChopper]

I helped prepare lunch in a Punjabi household this afternoon, and on the stove there was rice, two subjis, chai and a roti tawa all at the same time. I would consider this a typical (if not modest) lunch routine amongst the many Punjabi households in which I have had lunch.

[unmole]

> and on the stove there was rice, two subjis, chai and a roti tawa all at the same time.

So, they had 5 burners?

Anyways, my comment was more about the number of dishes. Two curries as in your example is fairly typical. Three curries, a sambar and a rasam like the GP said is definitely not. Chai at lunchtime does sound strange to me but then again, I'm not really familiar with Punjabi culinary preferences.