[giglamesh]

Line cooking in a restaurant is very different than cooking at home. Mis-en-place is usually not efficient for the home cook. The example cited by Jeff W is contrived. I've cooked at least hundreds if not thousands of onions at home and in restaurants and in almost every case I was chopping carrots or celery or peppers while those onions were cooking and never once did I have a failure due to timing.

[mmcdermott]

I don't know. I've found mis-en-place to be a great help when cooking at home and I've never worked as a cook in a restaurant or caterer. It helps with timing and it is also just nice to feel like the cook itself is simply "going downhill."

Now, for qualifiers, I live in a full house so things aren't always where I left them (so simply removing searches is useful) and I do cooks both small (just my meal) and large (for the whole group or pre-cooking meals for the work week).

[giraffe_lady]

I was a line cook for over a decade too and cook a lot at home obviously. Mise just looks different at home but it still happens. I still get out my cutting board and hone my knife before I start peeling the carrots you know.

I've always thought of the goal of mise being a sort of process fluidity rather than raw efficiency. Especially with tasks that can't be done simultaneously it's not going to shave much if any time off. But it still leads to less things to keep track of, fewer context switches, smoother transitions, fewer mistakes, more opportunity to notice and account for variations, etc.

You also have to remember that you have the skills and accompany judgement of a once-professional cook. You can cut the celery before the onions burn, but can you cut it before the garlic burns? Could a home cook without a professional background?

It's not that one of those options is "mise en place" and then others aren't. The answers depend on the person doing the cooking, and making that call is part of the mise process for the dish. Having a plan, basically.

[0_____0]

It's quite a nice reminder at the top of an emacs config.

It's basically the same thing as 5S methodology in manufacturing. Doesn't make as much sense in a garage workshop, but when what you're doing is the pride of your craft and your day-in-day-out, your setup and tooling should be dialed enough that you almost never have to think about it.

[thehappypm]

I have never heard of mis-en-place but I have always done it in my home cooking in order to have a better flow. Chop, then move on from chopping to the next thing; the next thing; don’t bounce back and forth. It’s just how my brain functions best. I would hate to be sautéing onions and in the back of my mind be “gotta chop the peppers in 2 minutes shit”. Plus I like to clean when I have downtime, so if I have two minutes I’ll wash my cutting boards and stuff.