Professional chefs may have an advantage over home cooks when it comes to the quality of ingredients and equipment at their disposal, but you can still adopt some of their habits for yourself. While you don’t have to wear a white chef’s coat (unless you want to!), setting up a mise en place is one of the simplest ways to elevate your cooking technique. From the French, “mise en place,” directly translates as “set up,” but the understanding of it in the culinary world is “everything in its place.” In practice, “mise en place” refers to preparing all of the ingredients and tools, and setting up the workspace before starting any actual cooking. Doing the “prework” ensures a smooth process in a restaurant kitchen when dozens of dishes may be underway at any given moment, and you can benefit from it in your home kitchen as well.