Mise En Place

I. Mise En Place. Always. Literally "put in place," mise en place might just as well mean "take time to save time." Wash, peel, cut, measure and select before you begin the cooking process. Set out each measured ingredient, ready to play it's part. Don't get caught up in the rush to start cooking. If you surge ahead, you'll just have to stop and take time to prepare what should have been mise en place in the first place--and you'll end up burning the sauce.

II. Mise en place your equipment. Gather what you need before you begin to cook. Have the tongs ready the moment the chicken needs turning. Determine early, before the critical moment, if they're still in the dishwasher.

III. Your station is your reputation. You can't build from bad prep. That is why you mise en place says more about you and your cooking than anything else aside from your finished food. Your end is in your beginning.

IV. Wash your hands. Warm water, soap, thirty seconds of scrubbing minimum, between the fingers, the back of the hands, and under the nails. Use a nailbrush. This is the only way to be truly clean, and a clean cook is essential to safe cooking.

V. Don't touch your face. Your itchy nose beckons? Resist. Failed to resist? Use a tissue or wash your hands again.

VI. Stabilize your work surface. Put a wet paper towel underneath your cutting board to keep it from slipping. This makes knife work safer. Likewise, shape a rag into a donut and place it beneath your bowl so it does not wobble. When making vinaigrette, for instance, you need one hand to whisk and the other to pour the oil slowly and steadily. The towel holds the bowl while you mix. Alternatively, buy a board and bowls with rubber bottoms made for precisely this purpose.

VII. Peel, pare, then cut. you peel to rid a fruit or vegetable of its outer skin, you cut to achieve the final shape and size desired. In between, you pare, for two reasons. The first is to create a flat surface on which to stabilize a wobbly, curved and possibly slippery item. The second is to sculpt or form the product in preparation for final cutting. Cubing a potato? First peel the potato, then pare it into a regular block, then into rectangular slabs, then into sticks, then cut into cubes.

VIII. Group like tasks. If you are baking an apple pie, peel all the apples first, then chop them. Do not peel and chop each one before moving on to the next. A cook earns speed using this expeditious, efficient, and organized way to work.

IX. Clean as you go. Keep moving and occupied. It makes you more efficient, focused and sanitary in your execution. And you will have less to clean up after cooking.

X. Do not cross-contaminate. Basic but often forgotten; wash the cutting board on which you sliced the raw chicken before you chop produce on it. Better: adopt the kosher standard of using separate, color-coded cutting boards for different foods (green for vegetables, red for meat, and so on.)

XI. Use a garbage bowl. Do as the pros do. For convenience, sanitation, and speed when peeling vegetables, cutting fruit, or trimming meat. Place the unwanted scraps in a designated bowl on your counter top or cutting board. If you're really ambitious, recycle the scraps back into the earth of your yard.

XII. Organization breeds imagination. Creativity is spawned in the preparation. Chopping, dicing, wiping: they are all half-conscious manual tasks that occupy the body productivity without taxing the mind, which is free to roam and flit. When the small tasks have been attended to, heightened awareness reigns.