Mise en Place is French for Set Up – and it is a crucial part of being a successful cook – not just a #homecook. Making sure that all of your ingredients are prepped and ready to be turned into a delicious meal. Not only does it insure that you don’t start cooking a meal and realize you don’t have any heavy cream (or enough), but it also makes sure that you have ingredients ready when you need them. So that you have the cheese grated before it’s time to add it to the heavy cream for your cheese sauce. So this week I am sharing some of my best tips for effective Mise en Place.
- Use prep cups to organize your cut up veggies, herbs, cheese, fruits, etc. If is so much easier to dump a cup of cut veggies to a saute pan than trying to scrap them from a cutting board.
- Whenever your recipe calls for a number of seasonings to be added at the same time, its best to thoroughly mix the seasoning together in a small bowl before adding them to your pan. This allows you to get even seasoning and flavoring throughout the dish.
- When meats need to thinly sliced or cubed before cooking it – it is helpful to cut the meat while it is still slightly frozen. This allows you to make uniform cuts so that all your pieces will cook evenly. And added bonus is that the meat will be thawing more quickly once you cut it up. So if you meat wasn’t quite thawed enough at the time to make dinner – this will help speed that up without having to add direct heat. Make sure you have a sharp sturdy knife for this tip.
- Always consider the final product when deciding the shapes and thicknesses of your cut veggies. If you can add veggies at various stages of the cook process, then it’s okay to have them all cut to the same size even if they don’t cook at the same rate. If you are making something (like in a slow cooker or one pot) and things are all going in at the same time, you will want to adjust. For example, onion takes much longer to cook through than say a bell pepper. So you want to either start the onion cooking before the bell pepper – or cut the bell pepper to the size you want and then make the onion smaller.
- READ THE WHOLE RECIPE! It is so important that you read a recipe from top to bottom before you even start to prepare it. This is true for a lot of reasons – like making sure you know what everything means, that you have the right equipment to make the dish, and of course do you have all of the ingredients. It is also important to check for accuracies. Most recipes are written by human beings – and sometimes we make mistakes and either forget to tell you when to add a listed ingredient, or forget to list and ingredient that is included in a step.
- Mise en Place is not just for the recipe ingredients. It should be put into practice when it comes to your cooking equipment to. Making sure you have all of your pots/pans/bowl/utensils etc. cleaned and ready, will make things go more smoothly.
A lot of the process of cooking a meal is in the techniques used to do different things. Sometimes it is about having the right tools and gadgets to achieving different things. But other times it is simply about having the knowledge of how to do different things – like how to roll a burrito up, or how peel, seed and dice a cucumber. Obviously there are some things that are purely logical and other things you would never have thought of if someone else didn’t show you. So I wanted to create a series of Kitchen Tips, Tricks & Hacks that I have picked up along the way to make my cooking experience more efficient, easier and even sometimes more fun! Obviously as the old adage goes – “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” – which is 10000% true – so if you have another way to do one of these things – please tell us in the comments.
Do you have any kitchen tips, tricks or hacks that you want to share? Do you have any ideas on other tips, ticks or hack you want to see?
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Now Let’s Get Cookin’!
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Estelle Forrest self-published this cookbook after a lot of playing around in the kitchen. You can purchase your own copy here:
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I love this, I’ll definitely be taking more of your tips on board, some I was already aware of. I’ve never mixed my seasonings together beforehand, great idea. As a disabled person, when I cook I have to have everything as prepared as possible, otherwise I have to keep walking around my kitchen which wears me out quickly.
Oh yes, my son and his class spent a good month or so learning about mise en place. A big one I keep reminding him of is to read the recipe fully and make sure he understands it before he starts making it.
These are great tips! Some I have known and used many times. Others I’m just learning now. The veggie cutting tip is so simple yet so helpful. Thank you for sharing!
Great tips! I need to be more organized in my kitchen!! I will be featuring your post this week! #HomeMattersParty xx
Thank you so much!
Estelle, these are great kitchen hacks and so practical.