Still think "mise en place" is overrated after a line cook taught me otherwise

I used to think mise en place was just for TV chefs and cookbook photos. Then 2 years ago at a busy Friday night service in Austin, a young line cook named Marco stopped me mid-rush. He said "your station is your anchor, not your obstacle." He had everything prepped down to the gram, and his station ran clean while mine was chaos. If you still prep as you go, have you ever tried doing full mise for one shift and seen if it actually speeds things up?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_park20d agoTop Commenter

Marco nailed it - once I started weighing out my garlic and herbs to the gram like he showed me, my tickets flew out and I stopped burning stuff mid-shift.

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nina_jenkins20d ago

3 pounds of garlic a week is what I was going through before I started measuring. I used to just eyeball it and half the time my sauce was either a garlic bomb or completely bland. Weighed everything for a month straight and it fixed my consistency completely. Now I can taste a batch and know if it's off by just a few grams without even looking at the scale. It saved me from having to waste time fixing ruined sauces when I was in the weeds. Best move I ever made for my station.

black.pat19d ago

3 pounds of garlic a week" made me laugh because that's basically my entire personality during prep. I used to think I had a gift for eyeballing it and ended up ruining more batches than I'd like to admit. Now I just weigh everything and pretend like it was always my plan.