Before you even start prepping…

…you should organize your workspace. There are few things you could do before starting to prep food to make the whole cooking process smoother. Not only you will make the dish faster and more efficient, but your kitchen will require less cleaning up. So here are the essential 3 tips for better organization in kitchen.

Clean your working space

Make sure that your kitchen is clean before you start prepping and cooking. Remove all unnecessary stuff that is around, and wash the dirty dishes (or just put it in the dishwasher). You will have more space to put ingredients, bowls and plates around and cook more efficiently if your kitchen is clean and free of dirty plates and cups from this morning. Also, this is good time to wash all the tools that you need to prepare the dish (if they are dirty in dishwasher for example).

Get an improvized trash can

While prepping food you always end up with some trash like vegetables scraps, egg shells, packaging, but your trash can is under the sink or on the other side of the kitchen or it has a lid so it makes prepping unconvenient. The best thing to help it is to have an improvized trash can on your working space, which can be one of many bags that pile up every time you to a farmers market/supermarket. Just open it up and put it in front of your cutting board. Now, when you are chopping onions or peeling carrots, you can throw scraps just in front of you. And when you are done with cooking, take that bag and throw it in your regular thrash can.

Take out all the tools and ingredients that you need

It is simple as that. Take out from the fridge and cupboards all the ingredients you are going to use and put them somewhere around your workspace. Also, do that with your tools that you are going to use (knives, peeler, grater, spatula, bowls, pans, pots, lids, etc.). So when you start to prep food and cook, you won’t have to open a single drawer or a cupboard. It can be very handy if you need something quickly, and more importantly, you won’t leave dirty fingerprints around your kitchen. Also, arrange the pans and pots you are going to use on the stove to have a clue where to put which pan/pot. So you won’t need to move it around while you are cooking.

Filip Rukavina