No matter how carefully stored, Flour has a shelf life – sometimes it needs to be used up so you can restock and yeah, you may have overstocked in a moment of pandemic pantry panic. Flour is the one ingredient I always choose to weigh out. Most other dry ingredients can be safely measured with measuring cups or spoons.
Inexpensive (non-sealing) bread bags are excellent for holding the mixes. making it easy to store multiple pre-mixes in a single larger freezer zip=lock. Individual labels with type of mix (bread, pizza, etc) and date prepped can be used to loosely seal the mix in the bread bags. I know there are less expensive freezer bags, but my experience with other brands, especially store brands has not been a happy experience. Since the more expensive freezer bag can easily be reused.
Just a reminder, if you freeze pre-mixes of dry ingredients, it is always good to let it come to room temp. For yeasted foods, best to not to add to the mix so you can proof separately.
As an important element of my “10-20-30 Minute” Life Style Mise-En-Place is not only worth the effort but it makes many things possible
So do you Mise-En-Place in the Kitchen or anywhere else?
For How to in the kitchen, a nice summary of the steps
Minute 1-5: Read Recipe TWICE or More – the only way to avoid unpleasant realities, like you don’t have the necessary ingredients, so may need to plan a substitute. (like mixing Heavy Cream with Ricotta to make a Marscapone alternative.
Minute 6-10: READ RECIPE AGAIN and then GATHER Tools and needed pots, pans, ice bath, whatever – Because no one wants to stop fail just because the sheet pan is still waiting in the dishwasher and your sauce is about to burn
Minutes 11-18: Prep Each Ingredient, measure or cut those veggies as need for a proper or custom mirepoix once all your ingredients are prepped and ready leave nothing in your space but what you will need. If you are not cooking now, get all the ingredients into the fridge or freezer as needed.
Miunutes19-20 : Clearing the debris – Rinse and add dirty stuff to the dishwasher –
take a nap, read a book, enjoy afternoon snack or tea, answer email, happily knowing that getting dinner going is only a matter of minutes whenever you want to start.
Minutes 20-21: Set Up Work Area This is usually even less than a minute – mostly just grabbing the tray from the fridge to the work area that already has tools and such ready and waiting.
InMySmallKitchen Minute 22-30 is final prep/assembly Using recipe, lay out the ingredients in the order needed
Most of the time much of this can be done in advance and in some cases I freeze the “ready for the oven” or the Ninja Foodi so dinner can be freezer to table in as little as 30 minutes, but usually averaging under an hour.
Admittedly, the 30 minute part may be longer, because of longer unattended cooking time (like 45 minutes in Pressure Cooker or Air Fryer
