In the Kitchen with Maia
Cooking I love. Cleaning up, not so much. My neat and orderly Virgo nature goes on vacation when I’m in the kitchen zealously concocting this, that or the other thing. A pinch of this, a dash of that and the next thing I know my inner Tasmanian devil has unleashed herself in a whirlwind of spice bottles, wooden spoons, and a variety of pots, pans and mixing bowls. What began as a fairly tidy kitchen soon resembles a post-apocalyptic calamity.
OK, I exaggerate. A little. I am actually grateful for the little devil—it’s because of her that I’ve come up with a few tricks to minimize the yucky cleaning-up part.
Look Before You Leap
This is very important: If you’re using a recipe, read through it—in its entirety—first, thereby eliminating one of those “Oh, rats (or your favorite expletive)!” moments when you realize too late that you were supposed to chill, soak or otherwise prepare something ahead of time—or that the cooking time exceeds the time by which your guests will be arriving by several hours. Trust me. You’ll thank me for this.
This is also the time to make sure you have all the ingredients—or if you don’t, you can decide what substitutions you’re brave enough to make.
Get it Together
Get your ingredients together before you start cooking. In accordance with my Virgo nature, I line them all up on the counter in the order in which I’ll be using them. You can line them up any way you want to; the important thing is to get all your ingredients in front of you, so you can do a headcount. Make sure you have everything—and enough of it.
To simplify the cleaning-up process, I put away each item after I’ve used it. By the time I’m finished, all my ingredients have either been used or put away!
Wash and Go
The clean-up-as-you-go method works really well for all your pots, pans and utensils, too. I use whatever spare seconds I have to quickly wash up any items I’m done with so I won’t have a huge mess to contend with when I’m done.
These are the tricks and tips that work for me—feel free to share your own!
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Clean as you go…brilliant!
September 4th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Try it! You’ll like it!
September 6th, 2009 at 9:50 am
While I am not a clean as you go person I do find that making a mise en place (measuring all the ingredients in advance and laying them out) is very helpful and in the end makes less mess. Plus it enables me to really enjoy the process of whatever I am making.
September 7th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Mira, You make a really important point–enjoying the process is essential to cooking. Thank you so much for pointing that out.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:30 am
You lost me at the word clean. Just kidding Maia.
Working in an semi organized environment does always feels better. Still wish I had a magic clean up button.