Mise en Place

Mise en place, French for putting in place, is the organizational discipline of preparing and arranging every ingredient and tool a cook will need, chopped vegetables, portioned meats, measured spices, sauces and equipment, before cooking begins. Standard practice in professional kitchens, it lets a cook move through a menu's dishes during service without stopping to search for or prepare a component mid-recipe, and the term has spread beyond cooking to describe similar preparatory organization in other disciplines.