Tip: Mise en Place

If you've watched Emiril Lagasse or Alton Brown cook on the Food Network then you noticed they have little bowls with the pre-measured ingredients in them. These ingredients are called mise en place, often shortened to mise (pronounced "meese"), and meaning "put in place."

Mise en place is one of the hallmarks of a professional cook, but as I tell my classes, it should also be the mark of a good home cook. Mise offer three advantages to home cooks. First, if you layout all of your ingredients in advance then you'll know before starting that you're out of baking powder or short on flour. This gives you an opportunity to come up with a replacement, run to the store, or decide to cook something else.

Second, it discourages you from adding ingredients straight from the jar. If you've measured out 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper then you're not going to accidentally add a whole teaspoon straight from the jar.

Lastly, home cooks are subject to interruptions: the phone rings, UPS delivers a package, or the kids get home. If you're interrupted and come back to the dish you don't have to remember whether you added the salt or not. If it's still on the counter you haven't added it and if it's not you have.

Although the little bowls are nice to have, especially for wet ingredients, small squares of wax paper work fine for dry ingredients. You can find a collection of pinch bowls here.