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24/09/2026
Mise en place is a French phrase that means ‘putting in place’, and is important in food preparation and food presentation, and chefs have used it for well over a century to describe getting every ingredient ready. It starts with picking the ingredients, washing, measuring, arranging and chopping them, before cooking begins. This habit is usually traced back to the famed French chef Auguste Escoffier, who organised professional kitchens into clear stations and roles in the late 1800s so cooks weren't hunting for things mid-service.
Food preparation before cooking also means washing, cutting, and preparing every ingredient, or setting them out, before you start cooking. Add to that shooting your food for content and food presentation, and these routine tasks can become a hassle. It’s an old kitchen habit chefs use to work faster and avoid mistakes mid-recipe. But if you make food content, from taking photos, videos, blog posts, or social media reels, this same habit does something extra. It turns your prep table into the opening shot of your story. Line up chopped vegetables, measured spices and clean prep bowls before the pan even gets hot, and you're not just getting ready to cook. You're building the first visual beat of the recipe, and it can be just as eye-catching as the finished plate.
For food content creators, mise en place isn't only about efficiency and speed in the kitchen; it's ground zero for food preparation. It's a window where raw ingredients, from the colourful, whole or freshly cut, not yet touched by heat or sauce, look their absolute best. Once cooking starts, colours dull, shapes blur, and steam fogs up the shot. The preparation stage is the window where you get to sort this bit out.
Just as a professional line cook prevents mid-service chaos by dicing and measuring ahead of time, visual storytelling relies on pre-selecting hero ingredients. Ingredients that stand out in the shots, like herbs with vivid colours and different textures, from crumbled to grated ingredients like paneer and cheese to lime zest. These will impact the final presentation of food shots or b-roll, making it feel intentional rather than improvised.
Arranging the ingredient bowls by colour and form, such as keeping julienned vegetables separate from diced or round ingredients in white bowls in a line or a pattern, lets food stylists and photographers preview the visual contrast of a dish before applying heat or pressure. Showing the transition from raw, unprocessed ingredients in the preparation bowls to a complex, finished dish creates an engaging visual food presentation for any video platform, be it Instagram Reels or culinary blogs.
Food styling starts with mise en place, and so does food preparation, and well-organised bowls filled with prepared ingredients do more for food video content than just keep the kitchen counter tidy. They give viewers a clear, colourful first look at a dish before any cooking begins. Colourful vegetables like bell peppers, carrots, peas, pumpkin, and sweet potatoes in glass or ceramic bowls, small ones with neat, measured piles of spices, and clearly separated ingredients are easy for the eye to take in quickly and also grab attention. The first 3 seconds are crucial for viewer retention, too, and posts with images consistently outperform plain-text ones in likes and shares, so your video cover is quite as important as the video itself. Sharper, cleaner images tend to get more likes, comments and shares than messy or blurry ones, mainly because tidy, well-lit images are simply quicker and more pleasant to look at. A well-arranged prep bowl shot ticks both boxes:
It's colourful
Easy on the eye
This is exactly why popular recipe video formats rarely show a messy chopping board. Ingredients appear to be already washed, cut, and sitting in small bowls, ready to be tipped in the moment they're needed. It looks effortless to watch, and it photographs well too, which is part of why this ‘everything pre-portioned into little bowls’ look or the mise en place bit, has become a signature of slow, aesthetic cooking content on social media.
Use small bowls or ramekins, or anything that looks good to the eye. Add only one ingredient per bowl, so colours and shapes are assorted across different bowls and feel orderly.
Pick plain-coloured bowls, white, cream, or even wooden ones, so the food's colour stands out, not the container.
Group ingredients by how you'll use them, for example, everything for a sauce in one row and everything for a topping in another.
Cut or measure ingredients in a similar size so the bowls line up well and look familiar to the viewer.
Leave a little gap between bowls, as space makes each shot feel less cluttered.
Pick content shooting times when the light is optimal, and shoot near natural light from a window when you can. Showing realistic food colours will improve viewer retention.
Keep a clean cloth nearby and wipe spills before you shoot, not after.
The main idea here is to organise before you cook, and keep the cleanups going as you take tiny breaks during the cooking process. This setup of laying out ingredients will also double as a visual, and flexes a little depending on the format.
Content Type |
What Prep Bowls Need To Do |
Tips And Tricks |
Food Photography |
Act as the initial half of a before-and-after story of a food video |
Use an overhead shot for the best visual |
Recipe Videos |
Let viewers see every ingredient clearly before it's added to the dish |
Keep bowls in the order you'll use them |
Cooking Blogs |
Give the post a strong opening image above the recipe steps |
Pair the prep shot with a short line on why it's important |
Social Media Reels or Posts |
Set a calm tone and build the aesthetic in the first three seconds of a scroll |
Use one consistent bowl set across posts to build a recognisable style |
Overcrowding the frame with too many bowls, so nothing gets to stand out.
Mixing bowl sizes, colours, or materials that don't match, making the setup look thrown together at one go.
Leaving cluttered counters, packaging or dirty utensils in the background.
Cutting ingredients unevenly, which makes the bowls look messy instead of intentional.
Using artificial lighting (such as a flashlight) that dulls the ingredient colour.
Get the basics right, and going about mise en place, step by step, barely adds extra work. You were prepping ingredients anyway, and the only change is doing it somewhere with good light, in bowls that photograph well, before you start cooking. It's a small shift in habit that gives every piece of food content, from a single photo to a full recipe video, a stronger, calmer opening.
The five principles are plan, gather, prep, organise and cook. The first step is crucial for a neat food presentation and for saving time during the rest of the process.
