Book on Mise en Place

[ExtraMSG]

Is there a book that covers storage, preparation of ingredients prior to cooking, par-cooking, and storage after prep and par-cooking?

I would love to see a book that has a section on fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, even stocks, sauces, pastry sauces, and so on that says you can, eg:

* Dice a carrot and keep it in a tightly wrapped plastic bag in a refrigerator between 40 and 45 degrees for up to 1 day if used raw, 3 days if used for roasting, and 14 days for stewing. Or roast diced carrot 10 minutes in 350 oven to be used in soups, sauces, and sautees storing in sealed plastic container for up to 3 days in the refrigerator.

* Roast chicken to 165 degrees and store wrapped in tin foil and plastic in a refrigerator between 40 and 45 degrees for up to 2 days to be used raw in salads, 5 days to be used in casseroles and other twice-cooked dishes, or 7 days for soups and stews. Can be stored in the freezer for casseroles, soups, and stews for up to 3 months.

That sort of thing. I'm just making this stuff up as examples. Is the Professional Chef the closest there is to that or is there something better? The PC seems to cover fabrication and use of ingredients well, but not always storage or what you can prepare ahead and how far ahead without much degradation. In fact, a book that actually tested the degradation of storage techniques would be a godsend since most information seems to be old chef's tales passed down.

[Anna N]

Hey, we've got all the expertise here plus a group of members who just love to experiment! Maybe we could all write the eGullet.com Guide to Mise en Place No, I'm serious, really. I would love to see such a guide.

[essvee]

I don't know if this counts, but I've eaten leftover roast chix up to two weeks after the fact. Cooked meat seems to last for a really long time. Same for soups and pasta sauces and casseroles and such. Give it a good sniff and reheat it well, but they can go for a much longer time than people think.

[NeroW]

You have to write it for yourself!

[Fat Guy]

I don't think there is such a book, though the New Professional Chef from the CIA has some discussion.

Might make a good class for the Spring semester of the eGullet Culinary Institute, if we can find a member or members who would be willing to do the research and present the results.

[mudbug]

ExtraMSG,

Try here. Scroll down to "Product-Specific Advice".

There will be plenty of information on food storage and handling.

[ExtraMSG]

A useful website, thanks, but the government is always overly protective, plus I'm more interested in how it tastes still and how its texture is, rather than if it will kill me.

[mudbug]

Yes, I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but since what your looking for apparently doesn't exhist... LOL! I figured this would be a starting point for general information and better than nothing (and not all of it is in regards to whether or not it will kill you).

;)

There are places like the California Avocado Commission which have storage and preservation information.

Anything with the information you're seeking would be a huge project.

[Anna N]

...

Anything with the information you're seeking would be a huge project.

But we are a huge group! And it would be an enormously useful database. If we could gather up enough volunteers, each could research a small sub-group of eatables, cite their research souces, plug their info into a pre-set format and before you know it, we could have the start of a project in the works which could be added to over time and ........ well you know the saying - you can eat an elephant bite by bite - I'd better be careful or He Who Volunteers Others aka Fat Guy will be listening in and some poor sucker will find themselves spearheading such a project!

[laurel]

It might be interesting to do some experiments such as the oen mentioned in this thread.

[ExtraMSG]

If it were to be done, probably the best way would be to gather a set of 5 or 10 "researchers" who would gather the information over a year or so. You'd want consistent conditions, I think, between ingredients so that if someone were to adjust, they could adjust rather uniformly.

You'd probably want each person to have a digital thermometer in his frig and in his freezer. Then you could take notes on each item each day. You'd want to have extra of the items so you could taste them maybe each day and take notes as well. A digital camera would be awesome as well so that you could take pictures.

I went to Powell's Cooks and Gardeners today and looked through some of their books such as Food for Fifty, Gisslen's Advanced Professional and Essentials of Professional Cooking, Peterson's Vegetables, and others.

None were that great for my purpose. The best were probably Gisslen's books, although just for vegetables, Peterson's book wasn't that bad. (As an aside, I've heard people laud Food for Fifty, but I don't understand why. It's mostly recipes when what you really need, I would think, are more general instructions on how to cook for fifty. And the book is expensive.)

The Peterson book mostly had really good information on how to prepare vegetables and how to store them prior to prep, but really no information on how to store them after prep or after par-cooking.

The Gisslen's Advanced book had good information on preparing your mise en place for all the recipes and the Essentials book had good information on a wide range of subjects including mise en place. In fact, I'm really tempted to buy that book, especially since they had a used copy.

But I couldn't find anything like what I think would be a very useful book for home cooks and professionals.

Edited December 11, 2003 by ExtraMSG (log)

[Anna N]

ExtraMSG - looks like you are well on your way to being that "volunteer"!

[Fat Guy]

Just to clarify, are we talking about mise en place here or are we really talking about food-storage? Obviously mise en place includes a storage component, but that's just part of it. Likewise, not all storage could rightly be considered mise en place.

It would seem, in any event, that the first step in such a project would be to assemble the information that's already out there. And the next step would be a realistic assessment of what could be accomplished without a lot of human resources, and in a short period of time. All this to be figured out by our volunteer, of course -- if we don't have a volunteer we can't really move forward.

If we are talking about storage issues, I'd be reluctant to publish any official eGullet document that says anything like "The government says you can only refrigerate cooked chicken for 5 days safely, but we do it for 90 days and we're fine!" It's one thing for an individual member to say that in a post, but to take more of an official position would be ill advised.

[ExtraMSG]

To me it's a continuum. You need to know the basics of storage prior to preparing the ingredients, but also after preparing both for using the next day, eg, and for using that day. There's a decent amount of information out there on how to cut, chop, and fabricate ingredients. But there's nothing that covers some of these very practical matters like storage, especially after cutting/fabricating and par-cooking.

I'm not so interested in how long to be safe. I'm more interested in how long before meaningful degradation in texture and flavor.

I'm willing to do a lot of this because I've been thinking about this for a while -- a few months at least. In fact, if I had any credibility, I'd be willing to do enough work to actually write a book. But I don't have the credibility to sell the book.