Mise en place or yours?

I absolutely love the idea of mise en place, but for some reason I cannot fully embrace the concept.

The Food Snob’s Dictionary defines mise en place as a “fancy French term for doing all one’s food prep before actually cooking – chopping, measuring, arranging, cleaning up, and so on.”

I can tell you from personal experience that mise en place makes cooking so much easier, and in my case, it usually makes for a better finished product too. Yet, 99% of the time I refuse to employ the practice of getting prepared and organized before I start cooking. And inevitably disaster ensues.

Let me tell you… Chopping, measuring, and prepping all the ingredients ahead of time, and cleaning up as I go, makes for a much more organized kitchen. And when the cooking begins, everything you need is right at your fingertips and ready to go. This allows you to focus entirely on the food.

And while I feel like it’s more work to do all this ahead of time, it is actually a giant time saver. Trust me.

When I practice mise en place, my food comes out great. Everything is perfect, and clean up is a breeze. I practically resemble a perfect housewife from the ‘50s.

But when I don’t practice mise en place… Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Or more accurately, a food of a different texture.

There was the time I made salmon steaks with blueberry sauce, and the blueberry sauce reduced too much and burnt because I was adding ingredients as I go instead of having it all mise en place. (If only I had at least gotten all the spices I needed out of the cabinet, I would have only half ruined it.)

Before I start any cooking project, I need to remember the times when I employed the mise en place strategy and turned out a perfect dish. The perfect carrot cake made from scratch, homemade brownies, my classic best-in-class oatmeal raisin cookies, and my dad’s favorite torta di pittata (I promise that last one is a savory dish).

My resolution moving forward is to make mise en place a habit. A way of life, in fact. I’m going to print it on a t-shirt. I pledge to bring organization and preparedness to my cooking game. And maybe, just maybe, my overall cooking skills will improve!