Mise en Place

Nobody wants to stand around cooking for hours. The flood of “quick-meal” cookbooks is a response to the ever increasing pace of business-driven society. Less time, better output. One way to eat well and save time is to minimize both preparation and cooking. Using raw, whole foods is a good solution, and a rather trendy one at that. But what if your favorite meal is port-braised duck with chanterelles and pearl onions? Luckily, there is a method that most chefs – and indeed, the kitchens they run – employ to keep food preparation as efficient as possible.

Mise en place [miz ã plas] is a French term meaning “set in place” or “everything in its place”. It refers to the planning and setup necessary to prepare food, both food and equipment alike. This includes cutting vegetables, gathering necessary spices, cleaning pots and pans, preheating the oven, and so on. Often, especially in English, it is simply called mise [miz]. The brackets denote the pronunciation as transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s worth learning.

Having everything in front of you allows two things things: easy access to all your equipment and ingredients (and that you indeed have all necessary items), and the ability to spot shoddy ingredients or equipment. A great tip for recipes involving eggs, and certainly part of mise en place, is to crack them one at a time into a small bowl or ramekin, inspecting each one before pouring it into the collective bowl. Every once in awhile, a bad one makes it into your fridge. Thankfully, our pal Mise is there to bail us out.

Okay, so lets get to the application. How exactly do you look at a recipe and figure out the mise en place? There are five steps, roughly, to tackling any recipe or set of courses:

  1. Figure out each step in the recipe.Usually this is done for you, but sometime it isn’t. Break the recipe down into sequential tasks that make sense.
  2. Assess which steps can be done ahead of time.This includes all your prep-work, preheating, bowl-chilling, vegetable blanching, etc.
  3. Decide how you will store your ingredients will be stored until you are ready to use them.Some things, like sauces, need to stay hot. Others need the fridge or freezer, while others yet can simply reside in bowls in or near your work area – so consider both the storage location and vessel.
  4. Determine the time each step will take.This one is pretty straightforward. One note, however. Sometimes you can use downtime later in the cooking process to get some prep out of the way. For example, if you’re making a roast, it needs to rest after being cooked. You can use that time to make the sauce from the juices. This is where you can multi-task by using passive cooking time to do prep work or cooking. This leads into the final step:
  5. Look for ways to be more efficient.For example, blanching vegetables partially cooks them while allowing you to chill them, and finish cooking them later. Since they are blanched, it won’t take as long and you can do it ahead of time while maintaining their quality. Also, if you are cooking several courses, look for common ingredients or preparation techniques in each dish. Doing all your julienning at the same time allows you to get into a routine, which saves time.

There are a few key ideas necessary that are beyond the scope of this post. They are knife use (and other tools, in general), and cleanliness. I will dedicate at least one post to each of these topics in the future. I must note this disclaimer, however. I am not responsible for your mistakes in the kitchen. I have badly cut myself, as I am sure most chefs have. It wasn’t fun, but I take full responsibility for it. If your knife doesn’t feel right, set it down. If your blade is dull, get it sharpened. This is what mise is for – getting out all the kinks and working efficiently and responsibly. You are entirely responsible for your own safety. That being said, here are some tips:

  • Keep your fingertips tucked under your knuckles, using them to hold the food to your cutting board.
  • When chopping, keep the edge of the tip on the board. It never leaves. Simply rock the blade to cut-you can steady it by carefully pinching it with the thumb and forefingers of your non-dominant hand. Let the knife do the cutting-bad things happen when you apply too much force. If you can’t cut something without exerting undue pressure, then its time to sharpen or true your blade, or get a new one entirely.
  • Keep your workspace sanitary and free of clutter, cleaning as you go. The only thing worse than not having space in which to work is hurting yourself because of a mess that you left. Keep it clean, keep it safe.
  • Make sure all the equipment and food you are using is thoroughly cleaned, dried, and prepared properly.

It should be noted that mise en place also refers to your individual setup-how your workspace is arranged regularly. Everyone does things differently, but there are certain commonalities (salt, pepper, cutting board, etc).

Till next time! Stay safe!