Lesson 1 - Mise en Place

Mise en huh?...I know that’s what you are probably thinking right now. Why do I need to know about this fancy French word to cook at home? Well, every good chef starts with organization. From what to cook, what to buy, how to prepare it and how to orchestrate the cooking of it. All of it stems from Mise en Place, “everything in it’s place”. If you’ve ever walked into a professional kitchen you won’t see them back there cutting the vegetables up for your dinner. These are things that have been prepared earlier in the day and most likely blanched (explained later) and prepared to the point that your dinner can be prepared in 5-7 minutes or less. So, you will generally find small containers containing individual ingredients for all the items on the menu. This is used as an organizational tool as well, knowing what needs to be prepared for the menu that evening will assure that you’re not in the middle of making a dish and realize that certain ingredient is missing.

One of the most important things you can do in cooking is mise en place. So, you need to start thinking about this in ways you can relate it to your home cooking. Start with creating a menu for the week, think about everything you’ll need to prepare for the evenings meals. Then, break down that list and create a shopping list, name different places you might have to go for specialty items. Look in your pantry, mark off the list items that you may already have. Then from what is left you have already started your mise en place for the week. Now, on each day look at the menu and see what you can prepare a day ahead, an hour ahead, or a week ahead and freeze. This is all part of mise en place, thinking about what is needed to prepare your meal, including cooking processes.

Let’s look at an example before I really confuse the heck out of you. Say I’m going to be making lasagna on monday and today is friday. I could make the tomato sauce today and put it in the refrigerator or freezer and have it ready when I need to use it on monday. Then on monday this is what I would have left to do: boil the noodles, cook the meat, grate the cheese, and make the ricotta filling. Each of these could be done hours in advance or a day in advance leaving the assembling and cooking for monday evening.

It’s all about planning ahead. Be constantly thinking, while your roast is cooking in the oven for tonight’s dinner, what could you be preparing to make tomorrow night's dinner quicker and easier? Is there anything I can cut, cook, blanch, mix, or marinate?

On a nightly basis before starting the actual cooking process all your "mise en place" should be prepared. Mince the garlic, chop the onion, slice the peppers, get the vinegars or oil out and ready to use, even get the pans out you will be using. Think ahead to the strainer, ice water, boiling water, heating oven....

This all probably sounds very confusing right now, but step by step with each new lesson we go through together you will start to understand it. Just as long as you remember “mis en place”, you're on the right track to becoming a master chef in your own home.