Top chefs seem to really have it together when they are preparing meals. When we watch them cook, they don’t scramble around the kitchen looking for last minute ingredients. Everything always seems to be right in front of them.

The French have a term for this – mise en place. This basically means “preparing the ingredients”. You chop and measure things out in advance. It may seem as if this will lengthen the cooking time. But it actually shortens it and helps make your food come out better.

Not convinced? Consider this. How many times have you left onions or garlic to sauté in a skillet, only to realize that you need to add the mushrooms ASAP but they are not cleaned or chopped yet? And by the time they are chopped, the onions are a burnt mess. Well all this could have been prevented if you prepared the ingredients ahead of time.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 8th, 2011 at 9:10 am and is filed under Fun Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.