One thing a lot of working friends tell me that they struggle with making home cooked meals is the time required. If one looks at the majority of recipes the preparation time is 50 percent or more of the total time it takes to make the recipe. It most “simple/quick” meals the cook time is reduced to compensate for this. As a result, the actual cooking technique within the recipe is pretty mundane.
But what if one wanted to make something with complex cooking techniques but without having to increase the time needed before food was served? This is where the whole concept of mise en place comes in. Mise en place is a cooking term which is French and has a literal translation of “everything in its place”. It is a combination of philosophy and technique. Basically one prepares everything one needs to make the meal BEFORE doing the actual cooking. You see this in practice in a lot of cooking shows where the host just dumps the ingredients in as needed. Because who wants to watch someone chop veggies?
The same principles can be applied by anyone at home when making weeknight dinners or fast healthy lunches. Here are my basics.
- Plan your meals ahead of time. Grocery shop and organize your ingredients on Sunday
- Get a bunch of containers with lids to store things in ahead
- Pre chop anything you are going to need ahead of time and put it in the containers. Do this the night before while your stuff is cooking (grilling or baking)
- Thaw or buy meat the day before
- Marinate meat in the morning or at lunch.
- Keep flavor base ingredients at the ready. This means pre-chopped:
- onion
- garlic
- celery
- peppers
- mushrooms
- carrots
- flat parsley
Now let’s walk through putting this into practice with a hypothetical dinner. Let’s say I’m making baked mac and cheese for dinner tonight, ground beef tacos the night tomorrow and pasta with tomato sauce the third night
Night 1
Step 1: Boil water and cook macaroni for mac and cheese
Steps 2-5 happen while macaroni is cooking
Step 2: Measure milk for mac and cheese set aside
Step 3: Measure flour for mac and cheese set aside
Step 4: Shred cheese for mac and tacos. Set aside mac & cheese half. Put taco 1/2 in a container
Step 5: Dice enough onion for all three meals. Put the mac & cheese onion aside. In two other containers, put 1/3 onion in each
Step 6: At this point the macaroni is probably cooked. Drain set aside.
Step 7: Make the cheese sauce with the ingredients you’ve prepped
Step 8: Bake mac and cheese.
Steps 9-15 happen while mac & cheese is baking
Step 9: Dice pepper for tacos and pasta. Put peppers in taco ingredient container. Put peppers into pasta container
Step 11: Dice hot peppers for tacos put 1/2 in taco container and 1/2 in a new small container for guacamole ingredients
Step 12: Squeeze juice of two limes into container with the hot pepper
Step 13: Get new container for taco toppings. Dice tomato and lettuce and put in. Finely dice little tomato and put in guac container
Step 14: Dice mushrooms and celery for pasta sauce put in pasta sauce container
Step 15: Thaw ground beef
Night 2
Step 1: Put oil and taco ingredient container into fry pan saute. When slightly cooked add ground meat and cook through
Step 2: Dice avocado into bowl. Add guac container, salt, mash & mix
Step 3: Get out taco toppings container
Step 4: Get our tortillas/taco shells
Depending on what you are making for protein with your pasta, this is the night you might thaw/prep that. I like breaded chicken breast so I’d probably pre-make that on night 2
You can see from my example that by thinking ahead for the week one can save themselves a lot of chopping, organizing time on the night the meal is being made. It does require planning and container galore though. I save the plastic take out containers for this because they are super easy to use, wash and recycle when they break of get stained with tomato sauce etc. Hope these tips help speed up and simplify the mean creation process for some folks.