What do you do when you find yourself with two or more helpers in the kitchen? Do you get distracted? Do you panic about assigning them the task of whipping the eggs to soft peaks? Take a cue from food television chefs and try the sous chef technique to take control of the situation.
My wife and I cook meals together in the kitchen. We often grumbled at each other, got distracted, and in general found that two cooks didn't make the meal cooking process go any quicker... that is, until we adopted a sous chef technique for meal prep that we now use on the regular.
This idea came about from all the food television we watched together. We were always envious at how everything was already prepared and ready to go. "Oh, let me just add that pre-measured 1/2 cup bowl of sugar to the mix" and "Now I'll just beat in those already divided eggs, one at a time."
We then realized that if one of us prepared all the ingredients, and the other handled all the main cooking tasks that perhaps that 30 minute meal might actually get done in 30 minutes. We call it the sous chef technique, and it's something you can adapt to any situation where you may have more than one set of hands in the kitchen, whether a roommate situation, friends who arrived early to your dinner party, or a husband-wife duo like ourselves.
For this technique, you simply designate a sous chef (or chefs) to prep all the ingredients. Tell them not to be shy about getting out bowls or plastic containers to separate all the ingredients (otherwise known as mise en place, which we've written about before). Then you can just toss and add ingredients as needed by the recipe. This technique also works best if you have two versions of the recipe. So my wife usually reads the cooking directions on the iPad, while I go through the list of ingredients on my iPhone. If we're following a magazine recipe, then I just take a picture of the ingredients on my iPhone and then go to the other side of the kitchen where I chop and prep.
The great thing about this technique is that you can also apply it if you find yourself on different schedules. For instance, I may slice all the onions, chop the tomatoes, and dice the carrots before I go out to the gym. Then when she arrives home she can simply start with those separated bowls of ingredients to get dinner started for the evening. This technique really does make cooking go by more quickly and you may find yourself welcoming more cooks in the kitchen versus keeping it all to yourself next time around.
How do you split tasks with multiple sets of hands in the kitchen?
Related: Basic Technique: Mise en Place
(Images: Chris Perez)
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Great post.
A tip: Maybe the photo of the eggs is a stock photo. But if you need to add eggs one at a time to your mix, you don't have to crack them into separate dishes. If you crack them all into one dish, you'll find you can still pour them one-at-a-time into your mix. A yolk and its white sort of "magically" cling together rather well.
mdorothy: I heard some celebrity chef say that it's best to put eggs in separate dishes in case one of them is bad, so you don't taint all the rest. Now, I've never had a bad egg in my entire life, but that might be why some folks still do it that way!
This is exactly what my husband and I do when we are in our small galley kitchen. One of us cuts, chops and preps ingredients in addition to any cleaning that needs to be done as we go through a recipe and the other actually prepares the dish. Works for us. Just wish I could use the same method with my 4 1/2 yr old.
As a teacher, I do cooking projects in the classroom all the time. Yes, it is like herding cats, but assigning mixing or measuring to individuals does help a lot. We usually start out by reading the recipe all together, and double check that we have every ingredient and measuring tool. (Teachable moments!)
With larger groups, I cut out the ingredients (and some steps, like butter the pan) into strips that are then pulled out of a bag. Usually I subdivide the ingredients, like 1 egg, 1 egg, 1 egg, so kids can take ownership of more than one step. Because it's the most popular step, everyone gets a chance to mix. The people just before and after the mixer hold the bowl. I also invite students to teach each other how to measure or prepare an ingredient: most of the kids have cooked with me or another adult before and relish the opportunity to share.
After all that chaos, cooking with other adults is a breeze. At least I can usually trust them to handle knives, add fractions, and separate eggs without disaster.
I did that with my father once while preparing an Indian feast for my mom. It was nice giving him all the stupid tasks like cutting onions, doing the dirty dishes while I could just cook and he actually said he liked having not to think for once and just following directions (he has his own small business with 1.5 employees, so normally he has to give out all the tasks and give them work and think about everything). But normally we will divide the tasks more equally and frankly, we never had a problem doing it the other way. While I like the idea of having a sous-chef I wouldn't want to be the sous-chef, so its not going to happen.
I think the term you're actually looking for is "mise en place."
Works well in professional kitchens, looks great on Pinterest, but I would never do it myself because I don't want to use every bowl in the kitchen!
This is a technique? Right. In my experience it just happens, depending on the task, the size of the kitchen and whom agreed to cook what.
@rosebud: You can do it when she is 6 years old. If you start teaching her now, she's be able to chop things by then.
I love this concept! Now I all need is someone to sign up as my sous chef. ;)
I weep uncontrollably in the presence of freshly cut onions, so I have to rely on my boyfriend or roomie to cut them for me.
Bonus: I'm slowly teaching the BF techniques to cook my favorite dishes.
If I'm lucky enough to have help, I'm more than happy to play sous chef, wash up and do menial tasks. My friends are all great cooks, so I love it when they take over in the kitchen.
Plus, I learn new dishes by watching how others cook.
If one person is more familiar with the kitchen, I've found it's helpful to make that person the assistant. For example, when my sister comes over to bake, she can never remember where to find certain bowls, measuring cups, ingredients, etc. If she was in charge of pulling items from the pantry and measuring them, it would take us three times as long to get it done.
This definitely works if you're confident in the culinary skills of the other person/people in the kitchen.
MaryWynn,
I have the same affliction and use ski goggles. When noone is looking of course.
Its probably a stock photo, so many may not know but what exactly are the herbs and vegetables that are shown in the main photo. Thanks.