What is mise en place and does it actually help at home?

Home cooks are often told to do full mise en place and then find it makes a simple stew feel like a production, with fourteen small bowls to wash. The useful question is not whether to do it but when it pays, and that depends entirely on whether the cooking gives you gaps.

Step by step

1. Read the recipe through and mark the fast section.Find the point where the recipe stops having waiting time in it. In a stir-fry that is the whole thing. In a risotto it is from the first ladle of stock onwards. In a braise it is only the first few minutes of browning. Everything needed inside the fast section has to be ready before it starts.
2. Prepare in order of use, not in order of the ingredient list.Group things that go in together into one bowl or one area of the board. Onion, carrot and celery going in at the same moment do not need three separate dishes. Things that go in at different moments must be separate, or you will tip them all in at once.
3. Measure the liquids and the small quantities.Spices, stock, wine, cream and anything measured in teaspoons are what go wrong under time pressure. Pour stock into a jug, put the spices in one small dish in the order they are used, and open the tin.
4. Get the equipment out too.Mise en place includes the tools. Pan on the hob, tray beside it, tongs, a spoon rest, the colander in the sink, a tray for waste, the bin lid open. Hunting for a sieve while a caramel is darkening is exactly the failure this prevents.
5. Set up a bin bowl and a wiped board.One bowl for peelings and packaging keeps the board clear and stops you walking to the bin every thirty seconds. Wipe the board between the raw and cooked stages, and keep raw meat prep on a separate board.
6. Scale it down for slow cooking.For anything with 20 minutes of simmering built in, prepare only what the first steps need, then chop the rest during the gaps. You get the benefit without the washing up, and the dish is not waiting on you.
7. Clear as you go.The other half of the professional habit, and the half home cooks skip. Wash or stack each item as it becomes free. A clear surface is not tidiness, it is working space, and it is the difference between a calm finish and a scramble.

Tips

• Small bowls are the barrier for most people. Use whatever you own — ramekins, mugs, the sections of a muffin tin, saucers, or just piles on a large board.
• For anything you cook regularly, mise en place gradually becomes unnecessary because you know the gaps. Do it in full for unfamiliar recipes and for anything where a step lasts seconds.
• Chopping while something is on the heat is fine when the thing on the heat is stable. It is not fine when the thing on the heat is butter approaching noisette or garlic in hot oil.

Common mistakes

• Doing full mise en place for a four-hour braise — It creates work and washing up for no benefit, and puts people off the habit entirely. Match the effort to how much waiting the dish contains.
• Preparing everything but leaving the pan cold and the oven off — Preheating is part of it. The heat has a lead time like anything else and it is the one component you cannot rush at the last moment.

Questions people ask