What is Mise en Place?
Mise en Place is a French culinary phrase referring to the preparation of your section, or area in a kitchen. It covers all of your equipment and ingredients. In other words, everything that is essential to your daily job. With an effective mise en place, every aspect of your menu will be ready to be used to create the order. The term Mise en Place literally means "set in place".
Is Your Mise Ready?
”Got your Mise ready? Are you set? Is your Mise topped up? Is your Mise good to go?”
I can still clearly remember hearing these phrases when I first stepped into a professional kitchen all those years ago and genuinely having no idea what on earth people were asking me.
From memory I would always confidently reply with a solid “Oui CHEF!” I found it was always better to be confident in that situation!
However the truth was I really didn’t know what they were asking me.
So, what does it really mean?
Mise en Place is the preparation of your section, or area in a kitchen. It can cover all of your equipment, including your pots, pans, bottles of oil, oven cloths, sanitiser spray bottles, chopping boards, Sharpie marker pens, tasting spoons, gastro trays, and squares of greaseproof paper. The list goes on. Anything that is an essential part of your areas set up.
However more often than not, it refers to food.
Food that you are going to need and use on your section. Individual elements of dishes, broken down and placed in containers in your fridge or on the worktop ready to use to create the desired dish or element of a meal.
How to organise your own Mise en Place
There are some standard, objective references to some types of Mise en Place, mainly referring to cuts of foods, often classed in French terminology. “Brunios Shallots” “Large Mirepoix veg” “Julienne carrots”, and the list goes on.
However, you will only learn exactly what your Mise en Place should be like once the chef has explained and shown you. Because we all know that one chef’s pickled shallot can be very different to another chef’s pickled shallot.
For example, how is the shallot to be cut? Brunois? Julienne? Half moon? Paysanne? Jardiniere? How long are they to be pickled? Pickled overnight? For 2 hours? For 10 mins? For 30 seconds? Done to order? How are they to be kept? In the liquor they were pickled? On a tray? On a cloth? In oil? Suddenly you have a thousand questions about just one element of your infamous Mise en Place.
And so with regards to actual specifications, always listen to your chef. It’s your chef’s menu, name, reputation, and ultimately, it’s their requirements. And these requirements will change from chef to chef. I remember an old head chef of mine mocking and ridiculing methods and techniques taught to me by a previous head chef of mine, explaining to me that “that is not how you prepare shallots" (or whatever ingredient it may have been at that time).
One personal example would be Hollandaise sauce. I had made hollandaise sauce a thousand times before at my last job. I could make it in my sleep. I made it day and night. However, when asked if “anyone at this restaurant” had shown me how to make hollandaise sauce? The answer was of course no. And as was pointed out to me: "until you have been shown how we make hollandaise sauce, then you don’t know how to make it.”
Why is your Mise en Place important?
No matter what level of food you are preparing, everything can be done well, or it can be done badly. From a simple sandwich bar up to a Michelin star restaurant. And the key is consistency. Ensure standards are met to the best of your ability. Stay consistent. Once you know how something needs to be prepared, stick to it and repeat it over and over again. Speed of preparation will come with time. Quality of preparation is the thing to master straight away.
How to get started
Aside from learning the basic veg cuts which any decent college, apprenticeship or head chef can teach you, there are some elements of Mise en Place which you can get set straight in your mind before you set foot into any kitchen. And they tend to follow golden rules that apply to lots of elements of how to conduct yourself in a kitchen.
- Make sure the area you are working in - whether it be a small chopping board, whole work bench or entire area in the kitchen - is clean and tidy. “If your work is messy, your food is messy!” (or words to that effect!). I would have this drilled into me, and with time, it’s a phrase I passed on to the guys who graced my kitchens over the years. And it’s so very true. If you work beautifully with everything organised and set out and clear, then you will produce beautiful food. It’s obvious.
- Have things set out clearly. Use containers, gastropans, tubs, plates - whatever is used in that kitchen - use them. And make sure you can back up your ingredient list 120%. If your chef wants tubs of pickled white crab meat portioned into tubs of 30g, then make sure they are. Don’t guess. Measure them. Don’t try to speed up your production rate by cutting corners and rushing things through wrong. It’s a lot slower in the long run when you have to redo everything. If your chef wants 3 bunches of perfectly chopped chives, then have 3 bunches worth. Not one on the top and the rest underneath a lesser standard. That is going to compromise the food that is served and take up more time to correct.
- Learn from those around you. If the person next to you has a wiping cloth and is cleaning their bench after every check, then it’s not luck that their section is the cleanest in the kitchen. It will be because they have learnt that that is the best and most productive way to work.
Chefs are notoriously proud of their Mise en Place. It is something chefs will aspire to be better than others at. And so make sure you can be proud of your Mise en Place. It reflects on you as a chef or a cook. How organised your ingredients are set out, how well measured things are, how accurately you are prepared with all elements of dishes is key to producing the best food you can and will stand you in very good stead for the rest of your career as a chef.