Try and find the recipe, I dare you!
I have a colleague and friend who swears by his clipboard. His clipboard is full of loose papers, napkins and anything you can write on the back of. Inside the arcane writings is his personal cookbook.
Unfortunately, a kitchen cannot function with that method and expect to make money. I have worked for chefs that function with this method, and it almost always resorts to chaos when the chef is not around. Worse than this scenario is that chef that has it (pointing at his head) all here.
What you need is a semblance of order: a binder, card file, laptop, or some other way to keep all those notes together. It needs to be consistent as well, and easily search-able.
I prefer the computer for my tasks. I have all my recipes currently in Excel format using a recipe template that I have created for myself. If you would like a start on that, check out this template at Food Margin Blog.
I am starting to learn about Access, as I feel it will be more powerful on the inventory/recipe side. There are a lot of programs out there that do this, but I want to create something that is custom made.
Programs you may want to look into include:
Pro Chef Plus – The program updates infrequently, but a good head start in the area.
Cheftec – The Cadillac of programs. It will do it all, except the actual prep. It comes at a cost though, and many orginizations are leary to put out the money for that.
Mastercook – (Link to program in my store) The program is defunct for Vista, but you might get it running on Windows 7. Better yet, if you still have a clunker computer dealing in Windows XP, the program will be perfect. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a learning curve to get a professional result out of it. The bonus is that there is about 10000+ recipes pre-loaded.
When you are standardizing a recipe, an important part of the process is deciding on a consistent system of measurement. Are you going to stay with the US measurement systems, or go to metric?
Both have pros and cons, and I do not want to debate them here. I will give you an invaluable resource when it comes to translating ingredients into weights: Gourmet Sleuth’s Cooking Conversion Calculator. That calculator has saved me a lot of frustration. You may have to think a little outside the box sometimes, but nothing makes my day like finding out that a clove of garlic weighs 3 g.
Finally, your layout is important. One reason it is no fun to work with the sheaf of loose papers is there is no consistent format. People become comfortable and at ease with something that is laid out in a familiar format. I will be reviewing a book later on this week to help on that task.
This post is part of the Recipes and Standardization in the Professional Kitchen Theme.
Copyright and Recipes – An Opinion
Ways to Implement a Recipe Standardization Strategy.
Tricks of the Trade: Nailing Down a Recipe and How to Enforce It’s Use
Cookbook Review of Recipe Writer’s Handbook
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi!
I am a culinary student and I have been asked to standardize a recipe and prepare it for class. My chef wants us to actually write out the questions we asked of each part of the recipe. I am unsure of all of the questions I should ask. He said, for example, that if it asked for two eggs a question would be what size eggs. Any suggestions on how to make sure I am conclusive in my questions and answers? Mary
@Mary – The way to get into what your instructor is asking you to do is to think like the person you are designing the recipe for. For example, in the case of the size of eggs, it would not be appropriate for a professional recipe, because the last thing a cook is going to care about is the size of the eggs. OTOH, if you are dealing with a magazine recipe, then it becomes important.
Note, the best way to do things when writing your recipes is to establish a kind of style guide for yourself, or use one that is already done. Set out in advance what questions would be answered, and call them assumptions. For example, if youa re talking about a cup of flour, start off your recipe book with the assumption that all volumetric measurements are measured by scooping the item, then leveling it off with the back of a knife. Things like that. This will cut down on a lot of repetitions.
Finally, a GREAT resource for writing recipes is: (Click on the link to take you to my store and see what the book is about.)