What does mise en place mean, and is it worth doing at home?

Watch a restaurant kitchen before service and you'll see mise en place in action: containers of chopped shallots, sliced garlic, picked herbs, sauces, all lined up in reach. When the orders start, nobody is peeling an onion. They are cooking.

What it means

Wikipedia's mise en place article translates the phrase as "putting into place" and describes it as the preparation done before cooking begins, organising the ingredients a cook will need for a shift. Johnson & Wales University, the culinary school, describes it as arranging tools, equipment and ingredients before cooking to work more efficiently and make fewer mistakes, and adds the less glamorous parts: planning, checking you actually have everything, and cleaning as you go.

That last bit is the real lesson. Mise en place is less about little bowls and more about a state of mind: think first, then cook.

Why it helps at home

Home cooks rarely cook a hundred covers, but we do have the same problems in miniature:

• Garlic burning while you hunt for the tin of tomatoes.
• Realising halfway through that there is no lemon.
• Pasta overcooking because the sauce isn't ready.
• A kitchen that looks like a storm went through it by the time dinner is served.

A few minutes of preparation before you turn on the heat solves most of these.

The home version, without the extra washing up

You don't need to copy the cookery-show look of thirty glass bowls. Here is a practical version.

1. Read it through

If you are following a recipe, read it to the end before you start. If you are not, think through the order of the dish: what goes in first, what cooks longest, what needs to be ready at the same moment.

2. Check you have everything

Take out every ingredient and put it on the counter. This is the moment to discover the missing lemon, not when the pan is smoking.

3. Prep in order of use

Chop what goes in first, then what comes next. Group things that go into the pan together on the same plate or in neat piles on the board. Onion, carrot and celery for a soffritto can share one pile.

4. Use the board, not bowls

Push prepared ingredients to one side of a large chopping board, or use a single tray or plate. Fewer containers, less washing up.

5. Clear as you go

Peelings into one bowl or straight into the compost. Wipe the board between jobs. A clean workspace makes the cooking calmer.

6. Set up your tools

Spoon, tongs, the pan, a ladle for pasta water, plates warming if you want them. It takes a minute.

When it matters most

• Fast cooking: stir-fries, aglio e olio, scrambled eggs, anything that moves faster than you can chop.
• Dishes with timing: pasta and sauce finishing together, risotto, anything with stages.
• Cooking for guests: where the aim is to be at the table, not at the chopping board. See dinner party without stress.

When you can relax it

For slow dishes, like a long-simmered soup, a braise or a tray of roast vegetables, you have time to chop the next thing while the first is cooking. Experienced cooks do this all the time, and there is nothing wrong with it. Mise en place is a tool, not a rule.

A good knife and a big board

Two things make prep faster: a sharp knife that you are comfortable with, and a large, stable chopping board with a damp cloth under it so it doesn't slide. If you're choosing a knife, see your first kitchen knife.