How and When to Use Mise En Place
Mise en place is a French phrase that roughly translates to “everything in its place.” As a preparation method, this is exactly what it sounds like: a method of preparing and organizing ingredients for maximum recipe effectiveness. This is so important to the operation of a professional kitchen that for most chefs, mise – en- kitchen is a way of life, which makes it the original “professional advice” for home cooks.
Part of the Skillet The Grown-Up Kitchen series , designed to answer your most basic cooking questions and fill in any gaps that may be missing from your home chef education.
Chefs have lived and died of their pity since the first old chef came to the service, still drunk from yesterday evening, but this is not always practical or even necessary for a home cook. First, home cooks usually do not work under the pressure of constant verbal abuse from screaming, inflated chef – cook; on the other hand, a full mize requires a significant amount of work surface and utensils. This is also more difficult than it sounds. Mise en place is much more than just chopped onions in a bowl; It’s also about focused planning and the constant fiddling required to consistently place the right onions in the right bowl and in the ideal place on the conveyor belt. Like a towering croquembush or a perfectly roasted leg of lamb, the dense misa is both a scientific experiment and a work of art.
To determine if your recipe needs misha , read everything at least twice, paying particular attention to the language in which the procedure is described. Does it say certain steps need to be taken “quickly” or “immediately”? You want mize . Do you have instructions to mix the ingredients while stirring or whisking? Mise . Are you a little intimidated by the detailed list of ingredients or is there something else in the recipe? Miza will calm your mind. It follows that there are three main categories of recipes that benefit from mise en place : fast-paced sautés (like fried potatoes and fried rice), most baking projects, and anything that scares you.
So you’ve correctly decided that the fifty-step, multi-day cake recipe venture will benefit from directing the location. What’s next? I promise I’m not trying to fool you here, but: read the recipe again. Then grab a pen and paper because you are about to rewrite the ingredient list. Most recipes list the ingredients in the order they are used, but you want to break it down even further, categorizing the ingredients based on what you need to do and when you need to do it. Using a hypothetical example of a super-complicated cake recipe, I’ll first group the ingredients by ingredient – biscuit , frosting, topping, and any toppings – and then make a plan based on when each step should happen.
Once you’ve completely planned out your recipe, it’s time to measure out the ingredients and get started. If you want to measure ingredients by weight or volume between you and the author of the recipe, but for the most effective direction, you will want to select the appropriate vessel for each ingredient. Here are some suggestions:
- Bowls and molds work for just about anything, but work best for flavoring ingredients such as salt, spices, and chopped herbs.
- Plastic soup containers are best for liquid ingredients because they are so easy to empty. They are also easier to target than bowls, making them more suitable for particulate matter that can easily be thrown onto the floor by accident, such as chopped vegetables and dried beans.
- Squeeze bottles are great for precise and targeted addition of liquid ingredients. Pre-measure the mayonnaise oil in a squeeze bottle and marvel at how easy it really is to “add oil in a trickle” as you should.
If this all seems like an overly finicky way of thinking about the preparation of the ingredients, I can’t say I blame you, but you may also have missed the point. The goal of mise en place is to maximize efficiency, and this requires a lot of invisible, hard, often completely ineffective work. But I promise you this: a deliberately planned mize will make you better cook.