mise en place

noun

ˌmē-ˌzäⁿ-ˈpläs 

: a culinary process in which ingredients are prepared and organized (as in a restaurant kitchen) before cooking

Wash and chop vegetables the night before the party: Professionals call it mise en place; we call it making life easier.

—Glamour

Mise en place is the religion of all good line cooks.

—Anthony Bourdain

also : the set of ingredients prepared using this process

The class's combined mise en place would amount to thirty-six pounds of mirepoix, big bags of all the other minces, chops, and dices …

—Michael Ruhlman

Examples of mise en place in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

To my left on a butcher block cart, the mise en place for savory rice pudding sits neatly. —Eddie Lin, Los Angeles Times, 31 Aug. 2023

Hansen talks of the new system as a kind of mise en place for information—i.e. a place for everything, and everything in its place. —Matt Crisara, Popular Mechanics, 18 July 2023

The smaller sizes are helpful for mise en place, or having all of your ingredients in place before cooking. —Michelle Rostamian, Better Homes & Gardens, 3 May 2023

Employees arrive four hours before a restaurant opens to cut peppers, grate cheese, make guacamole, and generally do the mise en place—prepping ingredients for cooking the way a sit-down restaurant would. —Phil Wahba, Fortune, 5 Apr. 2023

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from French, "setting in place, positioning"

First Known Use

1876, in the meaning defined above