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).
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.
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.
Software is so flexible, yet we can't make UIs the way we want and are constantly subjected to the whims of designers and the buffets of fads. No way anyone becomes a master of using software because software apparently doesn't want that.
As ridiculous as it first sounds, VR will likely provide the technology for the way forward.
;;; init.el --- welcome to church
;; Well then get your shit together. Get it all together, and put
;; it in a backpack, all your shit, so it's together. And if you
;; gotta take it somewhere, take it somewhere. You know? Take it to
;; the shit store and sell it. Or put it in a shit museum, I don't
;; care what you do, you just gotta get it together.
;; Get your shit together.
-- Morty, from Rick and Morty
I keep the quote at the top of my emacs config file.
Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a line cook’s ‘meez’ — meaning his setup, his carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, backups, and so on. As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system... The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it: you know where to find everything with your eyes closed, everything you need during the course of the shift is at the ready at arm’s reach, your defenses are deployed. If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for backup. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook’s station in the middle of a rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He’d press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, bread crumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side towel. “You see this?” he’d inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef’s palm. “That’s what the inside of your head looks like now.”
-- Anthony Bourdain, from Kitchen Confidential.