Mise en place (French pronunciation: ​[mi zɑ̃ ˈplas]) is a French culinary phrase that means "putting in place" or "everything in its place". It refers to the setup required before cooking, and is often used in professional kitchens to refer to organizing and arranging the ingredients (e.g., cuts of meat, relishes, sauces, par-cooked items, spices, freshly chopped vegetables, and other components) that a cook will require for the menu items that are expected to be prepared during a shift.[1]

One of the first lessons taught in culinary school has provided me with so much over these years. Although I don't cook as an occupation anymore, I find myself applying skills used there daily in everyday life. In a busy kitchen, you will thrive or fail by your preparation work.

I've taken so much from that training. Teamwork and working with others, communication, sense of urgency, responsibility, even things like conflict resolution, I've found myself thinking about these things more recently.

My last post made me want to dive deeper into the subject of why your tying table should be more organized. Mise en place- they are words that you live by not only working in a kitchen but for any task you are tackling.

As a commercial tier, preparation is essential to make the most of your time at the bench. it really does speed things up quite a bit. Even as a recreational tier, preparation is important you just change the scale. When I tie steelhead flies, I like to tie 60 of a pattern. I prep for 60, You may only want three, in that case just prep for three

In the case of the Reverse marabou tube. It’s a 15 step fly with 10 materials. I perform a number of crucial preparations to speed things up as the road to 60 is sometimes a little boring and I want to be as efficient as possible. My guess is that I save hours on this job with proper preparations.

Taking these preparation steps really adds to the tying experience for me. Think about what you can do to scale it to how you tie and try it out.