Being Prepared

I think that one of the biggest challenges new cooks face is timing. How many of us, when new to cooking, thought we could chop the vegetables while the eggs scrambled or the onions sweated? While there are some recipes in which this can be done, there are plenty, maybe most, in which it’s a mistake to try. The results can be a bit disastrous, and at the very least stressful: suddenly your pot is ready for those chopped vegetables and they aren’t ready, and the rest of the food cooks without them, or becomes overcooked, or mushy, etc. This kind of thing happened to me a lot when I was a beginner cook.

The answer to this is mise en place. The phrase literally means “put in place” in French, but in the kitchen can be loosely translated to mean “everything in place”, and it means having your ingredients and equipment prepared before you begin cooking. Professional cooks know that mise en place is key in cooking.

If I am using only a few ingredients in small amounts, I may just heap them at opposite ends of my cutting mat. If I am working with several ingredients, I chop or slice each one and put them in small bowls (tip: ingredients which will go into the pot at the same time can go into the same bowl together.) I get out the pots or pans I will be using, and preheat the oven (if needed) while I chop the veggies. When it’s time to actually cook, everything is ready when I need it- so nothing gets overcooked.

I’ve found that adopting mise en place has made cooking much more enjoyable to me- there’s no rushing about. I can add ingredients to the pot in between bouts of cleanup… and dancing around the kitchen