You’re ready to bake a delicious dessert. You gather up all your ingredients, and suddenly there stuff everywhere and you don’t know what you have put in already. Sound familiar? Let’s fix it for you.
Mise en place is a fancy French term that simply means to get everything ready before you start. So how does that translate to real life? Pretty simply, actually.
Pull out your recipe and read through it. Pull out each ingredient and set it on your counter, still in its container. Once you see how many bowls you might need, get out that many corresponding bowls.
We’re going to measure each ingredient into its own separate bowl. Sugar in one. Butter in another. Flour in yet another, and so on, until every ingredient is laid out and ready to use. Then you can put away all the containers so they aren’t cluttering up your space.
Double check against your recipe that you do have everything set out. Then follow the recipe instructions, adding each ingredient as you follow the steps. You can be sure you did add each ingredient because the bowl will be empty.
You don’t have to use fancy bowls. Anything that will hold your ingredients works just fine. It can be literally anything that is food safe and clean. It seems like more work, but let me assure you that it makes everything so much easier.
What do you think of this technique? Have you ever tried it, or something like it? How do you get set up before you start mixing your ingredients?