intro ... help with 'mise en place'

Brian,

Welcome to The Cheftalk Cafe.

You would be surprised how much you can do A day or two before.
- Eg; The potatoes... peel and keep in water up to two days.
-Your veg. Prepare and blanch the day before.
- You can also prep. Protiens the day before. But do not season till the day of the party.
- Prep your salad the day before and assemble the day of.
-Dessert you can prep and assemble in some cases the day before.

Of course this all depends on your fridge space. Everything you preprep. goes into the fridge the day before. Gotta go I have a lot of prep. to do at work today....

D.Lee

Nice to have you Brian. I can sympathize with your organizational dilema. If I am making a single item, it is often very good. If I am preparing dinner for 6, I am often in the weeds :) One thing I have learned is to "script" the preparation. Figure out how long each dish will take to prepare, how much time you will need to prepare the longest one, how much breathing room you want from end of cooking to seated at the table and how much time you want to spend with your guests. Often most of the mise en place can be done a day ahead; onions can be diced, carrots peeled etc. If you can, group these things together in your fridge. When you start cooking, start with the lonegst prep time and work through the shortest.

Welcome to ChefTalk
Kyle (From deep in the weeds)

[ August 22, 2001: Message edited by: KyleW ]

I also cook for two and am quite at ease. Like KyleW however, I could get very deep in the weeds for 6 and more.

and welcome to Cheftalk Brian, amongst great chefs and wonderful home cooks!

;)

[ August 22, 2001: Message edited by: Kimmie ]

Welcome to chef talk Brian:

Think about your catering experience and draw on it. When catering, one always attempts to do as much in advance as possible. It really easy to get into the weeds feeding the 500 if you are not prepared.

Kyle's scripting idea is a good one. Write it all down and you will have an idea in advance when you need to do what. ( Good straight line engineer type stuff - yes?)

Choose your dishes so that you are doing one fairly technical/bang up dish with relatively no fuss sides (lose the can opener). Practice this for a while. When you are comfortable with that - then add one more more advanced dish, and so on.

Is it a dinner party setting that you are worried about? Don't invite the boss over until you have had a chance to work on your "chops". Practice on close friends who you are comfortable with and then once you feel confident juggling your pans, move on to cooking for employers, in-laws and important political officials.

Congratulations on Madeline by the way. That is a very pretty name.

Cheers
Linda Smith

[ August 22, 2001: Message edited by: Linda Smith ]

I find myself cooking for 6 to 10 people fairly frequently and have evolved a few guidelines:

1. Cook nothing for a patry that you haven't already cooked for a family (2 or 3 people) dinner. Following a recipe you've never done is a sure rode to confusion.

2. Prep everything you can in advance.

3. Be fanatical about your mise en place. The missing item will always be the one that has to be added right now

4. Post a menu in the kitchen (post 2 if your prep area is far from the stove). Nothing is more frustrating than finding a dish or a course in the fridge after the guests have gone.

5. Script your prep and cooking. It's too easy to forget to heat the water for pasta or stock for risotto.

6. If you mustmake risotto, get a helper!

7. If you know a really good baker, buy dessert. Or appoint the spouse chef de partie.

Ah Brian,

The rule of thumb for chiles is this:

The smallest are generally the hottest!

;)

[ August 22, 2001: Message edited by: Linda Smith ]

Brian:

Not to worry, everyone here is guilty of a "black bean incident" or two. All I can say is Practice, practice, practice. You'll get there.

Sounds like there might be a second fridge in your not too distant future as well. I acquired fridge number two after storing my fridge overflow outside on top of the woodpile at Christmas. The neighbours dog, being in spirit of the season, came over and ate all of the dressing. :eek:

Welcome Brian nice to meet you. I can't think of any helpful tips right now but It will come to me eventually. :)

Welcome to cheftalk, Brian. :)

This is probably one of the hardest things to learn. I started as a young'un in the kitchen, and found timing and prep most difficult. (I helped my mom cook for our family of 6.) But the experience sure paid off when I had to prepare a seder for Passover! Talk about prep and timing.... that meal goes on for hours and has the force of tradition behind it. If the potato kugel doesn't taste just right, they'll remind you next year, be sure of it. I guess it'd be the same for any big holiday meal. Getting you "mess in place" is an art worth cultivating! I was interested to learn that potatoes keep for 2 days (whole, I'm assuming) and that other veggies can be blanched. And Linda, we are lucky to live in the great white north sometimes, aren't we? My garage is my walk-in for about 4 months of the year!

Welcome to ChefTalk, Brian.

I once couldn't find jalapenos when making fresh salsa and thought that one of those "little orange peppers" would sub okay....

Hey Mezzaluna, ever leave pop in the "garage fridge" a little too long and have it explode all over the place? At least a month or so out of the year, it be too cold in my store room to store some things.

Ouch Nancya,

Burning subject

I wish I had a second fridge too...I absolutely hate reorganising everything to fit something in for a half hour...

:eek:

For the deviled eggs: I'd either stack covered cake pans or (how's this for desperate) use muffin tins. Foil 'em after filling and stack 'em staggered so that the bottom of one muffin depression rests between depressions on the one beneath it.

Great thread. I always find out how improvisational I can be when I'm prepping for our annual Labor Day BBQ. Spare ribs and Thai chicken skewers for 100, and you're dreaming of installing a walk-in, just for the week.

Very funny Live to Cook. We will watch for the mushroom cloud from your expoding fridge here on the other side of the lake.

WRT the devilled eggs, in my catering days Brian I had several special glass trays with impressions for the eggs that would each hold 2 dozen plus halves. They were old, bordering on antique. Check out flea markets and antique shops.

Cheers- Linda

Hey Linda,

I collect everything that qualifies as "kitchen antiques". I will keep an eye opened for such a great find!


:cool:

While not as cool as antique glass trays, tupperware makes a couple of different egg servers:
http://order.tupperware.com:8008/que...si=0&x=20&y=18

[why can't I seem to copy pictures here?]

You have to click on the Image UBB Code button, then enter the complete URL for the image you wish to display. For example, you probably wanted to show us the tupperware eggtray like so


You have to place your cursor on the image, do a right click, then left click on properties, copy the address, click on the Image button and paste it in the script prompt box space provided, making sure to remove http://.

Thank you Kimmie! It is amazing what I learn here at ChefTalk!!!



well, maybe....hope it works this time.

[ August 25, 2001: Message edited by: nancya ]

No problem nancya, you're welcome.


;)

Hi Brian:

I just picked up the most recent issue of Bon Appetite- which has a lot of useful information about party prepping (including some stuff on the old exploding fridge) You might want to pick up a copy.

Linda

Hey Brian!
I agree with everybody else. Keep it neat and tidy as you go, plan, make lists(one I am guilty of not doing when I should) and really getting in touch with the ingredients before u through experimentation and research. But the best thing I would suggest is don't over-analyse it or the fun is taken out of it all, and then you tend to forget your original passion for it :(
Just play around with it all and have the very best of fun aswell :D

Everything everyone says all comes down to the word "organization" which goes further than the words "mis en place". If you don't have room on your counters to work, or if you have to rearrange things everytime you start a cooking project your giving your-self a LARGE HANDICAP! Each time you have to relocate a canister or some nick nack it diverts your attention and distracts you.

I say start at the beginning and re-arrange your kitchen so it WORKS. If your the person cooking then you get to control the space and organize it so it works for you. That starts by getting rid of items that are decorative on your counters, gone! Have a junk basket for mail. Another place where all the baby bottles go, etc... Kitchens are meant for cooking, not a place to put all your miscellaneous bits of life, put a desk somewhere, or a basket on the wall to collect that stuff.


So many people have too many gadgets, get a box and fill it with all the items that are duplicates like 5 bottle openers, 6 spatulas etc... .(other than silverware and serving dishes). Put it down in the basement and see if you really needed all that stuff or if your happier reclaiming the space and having less mess, less to wash.


Then turn your attention to your refridgerator. Get it neat and clean. Pitch what isn't going to be eaten (and stop saving crumbs of leftovers that waste space). Most of the fit and healthy people I know don't keep left-overs....their realistic about what they eat. In the case of a small child, don't open too many jars of food at once, it's wasteful finacially too. They don't crave the variety adults do and if they didn't like the item today they probably aren't going to eat it before it spoils either.

Only after you have your kitchen space organized can you really focus in on working in your kitchen. Then, lets talk mis en place and recipes....

;)

Hi Brian - Just checking in on the state of your kitchen and of course on the fair Madeline. Hug her tight.