11 ms·

Modeling chopping onions: The importance of mise en place

39 points by jwithington 5y ago

bern4444 5y ago
Mise En Place is very helpful as anyone who begins to practice it can attest. The other critical part of cooking (which IMO applies to other jobs, roles etc) is cleaning as you go - one of the first things taught in cooking school. I personally hate cleaning up after I finish eating so I try and clean and put everything away before I sit down.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  I spent a few years working in a kitchen, and those are the two items I took away myself - before I start cooking I clear out the dish rack, and then I have a sink full of soap and water and most of the chopping is done before I even turn on the stove-top.
- jwithington 5y ago
  Cleaning as you go also probably has the same impact as mise en place--driving down process variability. Less things that can get in your way.
- thanatos519 5y ago
  Both principles indeed apply to all sorts of jobs! Cleaning as you go also reduces variability and total time spent. Cleaning naturally consumes short spans of otherwise-useless idle time between tasks. It also enables pipelining of multiple jobs. I also prefer to clean up before eating, and that usually takes just enough time for the meal to cool down to the right temperature if I was cleaning as I go.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I have a strong desire to refactor code as I read it. I tend to avoid this behavior because (a) most codebases are in need of so much cleanup, and (b) I like to keep commits small and topical. Perhaps I should re-evaluate how I weight these factors.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
This page can't scroll in safari?
tantalor 5y ago
> The bell peppers need to make it into the skillet by the 3 minute mark after the onions are in or else the dish is ruined. This is not a realistic assumption.
- jwithington 5y ago
  It's not, but trying to keep things simple. Could have been something like cooking a steak in a pan where timing is everything.
lqet 5y ago
This is an amazing website. While it looks very minimalistc, every paragraph is in 11 nested divs and a final <p>, all with arcane IDs, classnames, and individual styling. Nearly 5 MB of JavaScript are required. Google Lighthouse only reports preliminary scores because it times out. The one-line paragraph "Most of the time you're good! But you end up ruining 23.15% of your shakshukas. Whoops." requires no less than 3.1 kB of data, still 1.2 kB when gzipped. Also, selecting text is impossible, and I am not sure if that is intended or just the browser giving up.
- phailhaus 5y ago
  This is not a simple website, looks like it's served on a platform called Hex. While this particular page is light on content, the platform seems optimized for more complex usecases.
- jwithington 5y ago
  That's interesting. It's a data workspace platform called Hex. It's really something more like a Jupyter Notebook than a simple webpage. I wrote some python code that's generating those charts. You're right that's overkill for what it ended up being. I initially played around with giving the reader the ability to set their onion chopping time and see how it played out. It was getting a little complicated for the point I was trying to make I think. EDIT: I've added that in now, which helps make it a little more fun I think.
- saurik 5y ago
  FWIW on iOS 12.4 it doesn't do anything and just renders immediately as a white page. On iOS 13.5 it takes longer but then gives me an error message "something went wrong / try again" which I presume is from the page (not the browser). On iOS 14.0~b1 it took a while to think (showing an awkward loading progress indicator that I am used to only seeing from Google's ridiculous blogging platform) but then loaded the page! Only, I can't scroll... well, vertically :/ I awkwardly CAN scroll horizontally (though only by a bit). Reader view, "of course", doesn't work, because this website is too "awesome" to allow that. I am now waiting for an iOS 15+ device to charge in the hope I might be able to... actually, I don't remember what the article was supposed to be about anymore? Onions or something? (edit: OK, so iOS 15.1 was finally able to render the content, with vertical scrolling!)
lqet 5y ago
> You think you can outsmart the recipe and chop the peppers while the onions are cooking. [...] The bell peppers need to make it into the skillet by the 3 minute mark after the onions are in or else the dish is ruined. How so? Just move the skillet from the heat and let the onions sit there for as long as it takes to chop the bell peppers. If anything, they will be more aromatic.
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  Even though there's no direct heat it will continue to cook.
bena 5y ago
For all of those people complaining about "the 3 minute mark", not only are you arguing the metaphor, but you're leaving out context. > "While you're a home chef, you are really particular about your shakshuka." So the dish isn't ruined by most practical measures, but it's ruined according to the person making it. And maybe they don't want it to be more aromatic. So regardless if it's a reasonable assumption or not, we can agree that sometimes we run into problems in even simple things that cause things to run over. And those overruns can cause catastrophic failures in other parts of a project. And the way to prevent those simple problems from causing overruns, is to prepare that work beforehand.
- lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  So, really the article is "The importance of mise-en-place ... if you are really particular about your shakshuka".
  - Shared404 5y ago
    Do software people really find it strange that people want to have all their tools and workspace set up in a particular way in advance and it makes them more efficient? Really? I bet most of us here could go on for a while about the customization that we've made and just have to have. So the precise example is a bit off, pretend it's a steak. Done.
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      Do you really find it strange that some software people just think of food as calories? As fuel? And that slightly "overcooked" bell peppers just isn't a good reason to optimize for taste, when it is just as reasonable to optimize for time? I optimize my cooking for time. I'll make a chili. I have a crock pot that can be put directly on the burner. So I can throw in the onions and get them caramelized while I chop the peppers. After them I add the herbs, then meat, then take it off the burner and put it in the crockpot heater, and leave it for the next morning, at which point I have ten days of chili. And it taste real fucking good to me. My desktop, keybindings, automation, etc, sure: mise-en-place. Because I am a software engineer not a chef. That's really the point I was failing to make: mise-en-place has its time and its place.
nemoniac 5y ago
Below is a quote from Anthony Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential" 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.
- titzer 5y ago
  I feel this way about UIs that are never stable enough and not configurable enough for us rubes to be trusted laying it out how we want. 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.
  - politician 5y ago
    It's a failure of the UI and windowing frameworks to enable this level of programmable personalization. Designers chasing fads are just the opportunists that fill the gaps left by Apple's rigid design ethos, Microsoft's random gyrations, and Linux's ever-delayed Year of the Desktop. As ridiculous as it first sounds, VR will likely provide the technology for the way forward.
turkishlurker 5y ago
Assembly in auto plants relies on a parts bundling/feeding process that begins in advance, analogous to mise en place and cooking.
klyrs 5y ago
This is an allegory for AOT vs JIT compilation. AOT decreases jitter. JIT reduces startup latency (counting AOT compilation time). In terms of project planning, a single cook using strict mise en place is Waterfall. When I cook, I aim for a more agile approach. Always cut onions into their own bowl first (for pretty much everything I cook). If the prep-time for the next ingredient(s) is long enough that I'd burn the onions, they go into a second bowl. But when I'm part-way through getting that second bowl prepped, I'll get the onions going. If I'm working on a new recipe, I'm more inclined to prepare further ahead, or I'll have a failed dish... but next time I make it, I'll have more confidence to multiplex cooking and prepping.
- jwithington 5y ago
  Yes!! Exactly.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  This is a terrific metaphor. Mis-en-place at home cooking only works if you have a very, very detailed recipe. Just like waterfall — if you’re gonna just full steam ahead on a project you gotta know what you’re working towards. Any missing detail (forgot the garlic! Forgot to think about an edge case!) can derail the recipe/project. Agile is more like a stir fry, you chop up some onions and throw them in, then see what else you got, all one step a time, and evolve and taste as you go.

39 points by jwithington 5y ago

Mise En Place is very helpful as anyone who begins to practice it can attest. The other critical part of cooking (which IMO applies to other jobs, roles etc) is cleaning as you go - one of the first things taught in cooking school. I personally hate cleaning up after I finish eating so I try and clean and put everything away before I sit down.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
I spent a few years working in a kitchen, and those are the two items I took away myself - before I start cooking I clear out the dish rack, and then I have a sink full of soap and water and most of the chopping is done before I even turn on the stove-top.
jwithington 5y ago
Cleaning as you go also probably has the same impact as mise en place--driving down process variability. Less things that can get in your way.
thanatos519 5y ago
Both principles indeed apply to all sorts of jobs! Cleaning as you go also reduces variability and total time spent. Cleaning naturally consumes short spans of otherwise-useless idle time between tasks. It also enables pipelining of multiple jobs. I also prefer to clean up before eating, and that usually takes just enough time for the meal to cool down to the right temperature if I was cleaning as I go.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I have a strong desire to refactor code as I read it. I tend to avoid this behavior because (a) most codebases are in need of so much cleanup, and (b) I like to keep commits small and topical. Perhaps I should re-evaluate how I weight these factors.

giraffe_lady 5y ago

This page can't scroll in safari?

tantalor 5y ago

> The bell peppers need to make it into the skillet by the 3 minute mark after the onions are in or else the dish is ruined. This is not a realistic assumption.

jwithington 5y ago
It's not, but trying to keep things simple. Could have been something like cooking a steak in a pan where timing is everything.

lqet 5y ago

This is an amazing website. While it looks very minimalistc, every paragraph is in 11 nested divs and a final <p>, all with arcane IDs, classnames, and individual styling. Nearly 5 MB of JavaScript are required. Google Lighthouse only reports preliminary scores because it times out. The one-line paragraph "Most of the time you're good! But you end up ruining 23.15% of your shakshukas. Whoops." requires no less than 3.1 kB of data, still 1.2 kB when gzipped. Also, selecting text is impossible, and I am not sure if that is intended or just the browser giving up.

phailhaus 5y ago
This is not a simple website, looks like it's served on a platform called Hex. While this particular page is light on content, the platform seems optimized for more complex usecases.
jwithington 5y ago
That's interesting. It's a data workspace platform called Hex. It's really something more like a Jupyter Notebook than a simple webpage. I wrote some python code that's generating those charts. You're right that's overkill for what it ended up being. I initially played around with giving the reader the ability to set their onion chopping time and see how it played out. It was getting a little complicated for the point I was trying to make I think. EDIT: I've added that in now, which helps make it a little more fun I think.
saurik 5y ago
FWIW on iOS 12.4 it doesn't do anything and just renders immediately as a white page. On iOS 13.5 it takes longer but then gives me an error message "something went wrong / try again" which I presume is from the page (not the browser). On iOS 14.0~b1 it took a while to think (showing an awkward loading progress indicator that I am used to only seeing from Google's ridiculous blogging platform) but then loaded the page! Only, I can't scroll... well, vertically :/ I awkwardly CAN scroll horizontally (though only by a bit). Reader view, "of course", doesn't work, because this website is too "awesome" to allow that. I am now waiting for an iOS 15+ device to charge in the hope I might be able to... actually, I don't remember what the article was supposed to be about anymore? Onions or something? (edit: OK, so iOS 15.1 was finally able to render the content, with vertical scrolling!)

lqet 5y ago

> You think you can outsmart the recipe and chop the peppers while the onions are cooking. [...] The bell peppers need to make it into the skillet by the 3 minute mark after the onions are in or else the dish is ruined. How so? Just move the skillet from the heat and let the onions sit there for as long as it takes to chop the bell peppers. If anything, they will be more aromatic.

brodouevencode 5y ago
Even though there's no direct heat it will continue to cook.

bena 5y ago

For all of those people complaining about "the 3 minute mark", not only are you arguing the metaphor, but you're leaving out context. > "While you're a home chef, you are really particular about your shakshuka." So the dish isn't ruined by most practical measures, but it's ruined according to the person making it. And maybe they don't want it to be more aromatic. So regardless if it's a reasonable assumption or not, we can agree that sometimes we run into problems in even simple things that cause things to run over. And those overruns can cause catastrophic failures in other parts of a project. And the way to prevent those simple problems from causing overruns, is to prepare that work beforehand.

lowbloodsugar 5y ago
So, really the article is "The importance of mise-en-place ... if you are really particular about your shakshuka".
- Shared404 5y ago
  Do software people really find it strange that people want to have all their tools and workspace set up in a particular way in advance and it makes them more efficient? Really? I bet most of us here could go on for a while about the customization that we've made and just have to have. So the precise example is a bit off, pretend it's a steak. Done.
  - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    Do you really find it strange that some software people just think of food as calories? As fuel? And that slightly "overcooked" bell peppers just isn't a good reason to optimize for taste, when it is just as reasonable to optimize for time? I optimize my cooking for time. I'll make a chili. I have a crock pot that can be put directly on the burner. So I can throw in the onions and get them caramelized while I chop the peppers. After them I add the herbs, then meat, then take it off the burner and put it in the crockpot heater, and leave it for the next morning, at which point I have ten days of chili. And it taste real fucking good to me. My desktop, keybindings, automation, etc, sure: mise-en-place. Because I am a software engineer not a chef. That's really the point I was failing to make: mise-en-place has its time and its place.

nemoniac 5y ago

Below is a quote from Anthony Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential" 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.

titzer 5y ago
I feel this way about UIs that are never stable enough and not configurable enough for us rubes to be trusted laying it out how we want. 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.
- politician 5y ago
  It's a failure of the UI and windowing frameworks to enable this level of programmable personalization. Designers chasing fads are just the opportunists that fill the gaps left by Apple's rigid design ethos, Microsoft's random gyrations, and Linux's ever-delayed Year of the Desktop. As ridiculous as it first sounds, VR will likely provide the technology for the way forward.

turkishlurker 5y ago

Assembly in auto plants relies on a parts bundling/feeding process that begins in advance, analogous to mise en place and cooking.

klyrs 5y ago

This is an allegory for AOT vs JIT compilation. AOT decreases jitter. JIT reduces startup latency (counting AOT compilation time). In terms of project planning, a single cook using strict mise en place is Waterfall. When I cook, I aim for a more agile approach. Always cut onions into their own bowl first (for pretty much everything I cook). If the prep-time for the next ingredient(s) is long enough that I'd burn the onions, they go into a second bowl. But when I'm part-way through getting that second bowl prepped, I'll get the onions going. If I'm working on a new recipe, I'm more inclined to prepare further ahead, or I'll have a failed dish... but next time I make it, I'll have more confidence to multiplex cooking and prepping.

jwithington 5y ago
Yes!! Exactly.
thehappypm 5y ago
This is a terrific metaphor. Mis-en-place at home cooking only works if you have a very, very detailed recipe. Just like waterfall — if you’re gonna just full steam ahead on a project you gotta know what you’re working towards. Any missing detail (forgot the garlic! Forgot to think about an edge case!) can derail the recipe/project. Agile is more like a stir fry, you chop up some onions and throw them in, then see what else you got, all one step a time, and evolve and taste as you go.