Business Insights

Utilizing Standardized Recipes

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Consistency in the kitchen is essential in Healthcare and Education for food preparation. That is why our Nutrition Services Team always recommends working with Standardized Recipes. Working with a standardized recipe guarantees your quality of food, accurate portion size, maintains your budget, expedites ordering, and reduces food waste.

WHAT IS A STANDARDIZED RECIPE?

According to USDA, a standardized recipe is one that “has been tried, adapted, and retried several times for use by a given foodservice operation and has been found to produce the same good results and yield every time when the exact procedures are used with the same type of equipment and the same quantity and quality of ingredients.”

BENEFITS OF STANDARDIZED RECIPES

  • Quality control - Deliver the same quantity and quality consistently in food items that have been tested and evaluated.
  • Projecting portions – Accurately predict portion yield of recipe and specify serving size and utensil for consistency. Eliminates food waste, excessive leftovers, or substitutions due to underproduction.
  • Controlling cost - Manage food and portion cost, as well as purchasing and storage through ingredient specification.
  • Labor Efficiency - Increase productivity of cooks and simplify employee training with specific written instructions.
  • Special diets - Reduce anxiety of customers with special dietary needs. Nutrient analysis can be done on each recipe and ingredient to determine anything that might be an issue for those with allergies.
Healthcare Cullinary Chef

COMPONENTS OF A STANDARDIZED RECIPE:

  • Recipe Title
  • Recipe category
  • Ingredients (in order of their use)
  • Weight/measure for each ingredient
  • Preparation instructions
  • Cooking temperature and time
  • Portion size
  • Recipe yield
  • Equipment to be used

If you are a senior living facility, school district, food service director, or a healthcare or school operation looking to standardize your recipes, Shamrock Foods Menu Wizard+ can help. Menu Wizard+ saves time and provides access to a database of 6,000+ standardized recipes for its users. Connect with our Nutrition Services Team, complete with trained nutritionists and dietitians, to learn how to get started [email protected].

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