The Benefits of Mise en Place for Everyday Cooking
Incorporating the culinary technique of mise en place into your cooking routine will be one of the most impactful changes you can make in your regular cooking. This is not a tool for professional chefs alone. By utilizing a few minutes to gather, measure, and chop your ingredients, you can enjoy a much more relaxed and inspired cooking experience. Gone is the anxiety that comes from rummaging for the next ingredient, or the spice you need to add. Mise en place will simplify your cooking process, save time, and give you space to think about how to layer flavor into your dish.
The key to mise en place is that it shows you that cooking isn’t just a frantic rush to get the food in the pan as quickly as possible. When you chop vegetables, measure out your spices, and lay out your tools, it becomes clear what order you should do things. This is also the time when you can refine processes a bit. When you’re setting up, you’ll notice that your garlic has gone bad and that you need to get some more. You can toast your spices while you wait for your pan to heat up. All of these little optimizations add up, and make it easier to cook well, even when it’s just a quick dinner on a work night.
Mise en place can also help with food waste and ingredient planning. You’re a lot more likely to know what you have on hand. And once all your ingredients are measured, it’s easy to double a recipe, use an alternative ingredient, or make something entirely different. For example, once the protein, vegetables, and seasonings are ready and waiting in their little piles, making a stir-fry is a lot less of a chaotic experience, and the dish will be much more balanced and colorful. Over time, this process will teach you to cook more intentionally.
The first time home cooks hear about the extra effort of prepping, they tend to think that this increases their overall work. This simply isn’t the case once you get comfortable with it. Your final result goes through the entire process of cooking that much faster since you’re not dealing with the usual massive pile of dishes because you’re using the tools as you go and cleaning them as you go, you don’t have to worry about overcooking because you can be handling a million things at once with minimal effort, and your presentation shows a significant improvement. It starts as a system, but it eventually becomes second nature and you end up with that effortless cooking that you desire.
Over time, mise en place will help you feel more in control of the food you make, and even on busy days, you’ll be more likely to enjoy the process of cooking. Eventually, your kitchen will become less of a war zone and more of a pleasant place to work where tasty meals magically appear with a little prep and cleanup.
