The Case for Mise En Place

Mise en place. Three little words upon which all of chef-dom begins. Translated, it literally means “to put into place”.  The most basic of all cooking basics, I like to think of mise en place in terms of the first half of a recipe, or the ingredients list. When a recipe calls for “1 cup tomatoes, diced” or “10 ounces flour, sifted”, that, in the simplest terms, is mise en place.  In this past September’s issue of Bon Appetit, Chef Thomas Keller offered a more precise definition. “[It] is about having everything you need before you start cooking: picturing every task involved in creating a dish – all the ingredients and all the tools – and having them organized in advance.”

I am a bit of a mise en place geek.  I’m not certain why. Something about measuring a teaspoons of this or a tablespoon of that and putting it all into separate containers – some so small they look better suited for squirrels than humans – gives me a sense of structure and order that my ADD-style of cooking so desperately needs. When I mind my mise en place, my cooking improves, I make fewer mistakes, and I have less stress and less mess.

While it is arguably a necessity in the restaurant business, mise en place may seem less important for the home cook. Many might even argue that if you’re a good cook, and you know what you’re doing, you needn’t think twice about it. This may be true. Some people can just look at a recipe and instinctively know the natural order of things. Whether through experience or some innate ability, they initiate a recipe and everything just falls into place. For the rest of us, mise en place is a more conscientious pursuit.

There are many benefits of mise en place.  Not the least of which is that it makes you a better cook.  There are two reasons for this.  First, good mise en place habits enable you to focus your attention where and when it is needed. For example, of all the tasks we cooks perform in the kitchen, it is the cooking – the actual application of heat on food – that often requires most of our focus.  The difference between perfectly cooked and overcooked can be mere minutes, sometimes seconds.  When the moment comes, you don’t want to be fumbling around for a measuring spoon or an essential ingredient. By having everything in its place and ready to go, you can focus on the important stuff and ensure greater success.

Another reason mise en place makes for better cooking is that it insures against those “uh-oh” moments.  How many times have you been in the middle of preparing a dish only to realize you were all out of, or forgot to purchase, a certain ingredient?  It’s happened to almost all of us.  These are the times that force us to find an alternative or sacrifice the ingredient all together. Sometimes the absence of even one ingredient can mean the difference between dinner and disaster.

For these reasons and others, mise en place can go a long way at reducing stress in the kitchen, especially when entertaining. Something invariably goes wrong: The aforementioned forgotten ingredient, a sauce turning lumpy, or a roast that just won’t cook in time. Things begin to spiral out of control, and you fall behind schedule. You can sense your guest growing hungrier by the minute. The pressure mounts, and you go into an altered state of consciousness wherein all of you cognitive powers center on one thing and one thing only: Getting the food on the table. Invariably, you pull it off, but it takes a toll on you. You end up exhausted, and your guests know it.  Cooking shouldn’t be that much work, and it doesn’t have to be with the proper level of preparation.

Mise en place also aids with clean up. Being ready from the start, makes for a cleaner kitchen in the end. You can confront some of those post-meal cleaning challenges before you even put a pan to the stove.  If you wait until an ingredient is called for before you measure or prepare it, you’re less likely to put things back in place or clean your tools, but if you factor these tasks into your prep work, clean-ups are that much easier.

Mise en place should not be confined to the kitchen either.  It has application in so many things we do.  Case in point: This post. I spent days just trying to get it down on paper. With every attempt, I would either be so easily distracted that nothing got written, or I’d ramble on for pages and never get my point across.  After a couple weeks of this, I began to think that maybe the message wasn’t worth the effort.  That’s when I took a step back and applied a little mise en place in the form of an outline.  You remember those from your high school or college days, don’t you? Well, it worked. It allowed me to organize my thoughts like ingredients in a recipe. I was able to cut out the waste and find the structure I needed to stay the course and finish.   The truth is that mise en place has application throughout our lives.  The more I cook with it, the more I can see its value.

I know that some cooks feel that mise en place takes all the fun out of cooking.  After all, where is the reckless abandon that Harriet Van Horne claimed was so essential for love and cooking? With all due respect, Ms. Van Horne never had the clean-up the kitchen behind me.  If she had, I dare say she’d have sung a different tune. Reckless abandon of any kind tends to leave behind a mess. Trust me.  Mise en place does not take the fun out of cooking any more than a map takes the fun out of getting lost.

A former co-worker of mine used to lament that when her husband cooked he took too much time getting everything measured and in place before he ever started cooking.  She had a more “as you go” style of cooking and could get dinner on the table in less time.  It is possible to go a little overboard with the mise en place.  You needn’t measure out every single ingredient the recipe calls for, but you do need the ingredients, and tools, close at hand. Any preliminary preparation – chopping, slicing, beating, whipping, etc. – should be out of the way.

Here are few mise en place tips I’ve put together.  Hopefully, you will find them useful, and please share any of your own in the comments section.

• Read through a recipe twice. If it’s one you already know.  Walk through it in your mind. Make note of every thing you will need and pull it out or make certain it’s in reach.  Set ingredients in one area together. This will make sure you have everything you need.

• Measure, prep and set aside using prep bowls.  Keep a collection of various sized bowls handy for storing everything from a a couple of ounces to several cups. There are many different types available.  Look for ones that are not easily tipped over if accidentally tapped or nudged.  Deli containers and other re-usable plastic containers are an affordable option.

• Think in terms of how long something takes to cook. Whether you’re making one dish or a seven course meal, start with the items that take longer to cook and work you way to those ingredients or dishes that take the less time.
• Return things to their usually place as soon as you are done measuring.  Store or dispose of your scraps immediately.  This will aid with cleanup and free-up more work space.

• Start with the end in mind. Know where you food is going to land when you start cooking it.  If you put a steak on the grill, make sure you have a serving plate ready.  When you put pasta in boiling water, have a colander ready for straining the water off.

• Learning to approximate ingredients can save time measuring.  For example, if you need a cup of flour and have an eight ounce prep bowl, use it to both measure and store.  Know what a teaspoon of salt looks like in your hand or what a tablespoon of oil looks like in the bottom of a pan.

• Set recipes or cookbooks aside in a well-lighted area and out of the way of your prep area.

• Keep a well-organized kitchen.  It’s really just an extension of mise en place. For example, I keep a canister of spatulas, and spoons on the counter next to my stove.  So I never have to go searching for them.

Whether you are just starting out or trying to erase a lifetime of bad practices, mise en place is fundamental habit worth forming and can provide a framework within which some great cooking can take place. It is the first lesson in a technique-driven approach to better cooking.