Mise En Place

I am the first person to admit that I often omit one of the most crucial steps in cooking - preparation. It's a pretty crappy feeling to get halfway through a recipe and realize that you are missing a crucial ingredient. Luckily, I've been professionally trained NOT to do that and if I do, to find a suitable replacement. But that's not what this post is about.

One of the first terms that we learned in culinary school was "mise en place". Mise en place means "putting in place" and is a term that we ended up using every single day. Our daily mise en place ranged from getting all of the ingredients for the teaching demonstration to measuring out the ingredients for our individual recipes. It was embedded in our brains to get everything together before we started cooking.

It makes perfect sense right? I think it does, but sometimes it just slips my mind. The one thing that helps me remember is having the right tools available to help keep myself organized. 

Measuring Bowls

Deli Cups

                              

Having one of these around will be very helpful. We swore by deli cups at school. Not only were they great for storage, but they were great for measuring and separating all of our food. Getting your mise en place together not only helps you kick off your recipe but it helps keep things organized and clean. So if there's one word that you learn from my French culinary education, please let it be mise en place!! It's one of the simplest things in cooking that makes a world of a difference.

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