Whether you need a prep recipe depends on what you're making and how detailed your kitchen workflow needs to be. Prep recipes help break down complex steps like chopping, marinating, or pre-cooking ingredients, especially useful in large kitchens or when multiple teams are involved. But if the preparation is simple or assumed knowledge, you can skip the prep recipe and include everything in a single serving recipe.
Examples: Prep or Serving Recipe?
Imagine you’re making hamburgers.
You could create a prep recipe titled “Hamburger, prep portion” with 16 oz. ground beef and a serving recipe that uses "1 EA" of the prep portion.
However, if shaping patties is standard kitchen knowledge and doesn’t affect cost or shrinkage, skip the prep recipe and use 6 oz. ground beef directly in the serving recipe.
Here's another example: Smoky Meatballs versus Meatloaf Sandwich.
The Smoky Meatballs prep involves mixing beef, pork, vegetables, and spices. Just like with the hamburger example, rolling the mixture into balls is a straightforward step that doesn’t affect cost or shrinkage, so you don’t need a separate prep recipe for that. Instead create a serving recipe that uses a portion of the meat mixture directly.
Now compare that to making Meatloaf Sandwiches. In this case, the prep includes forming the meat mixture into a loaf, baking it, glazing it with BBQ sauce, and slicing it. These steps are more complex and introduce shrinkage and added ingredients (like the glaze), which affect the final food cost. Here, a prep recipe is justified to document the method, tracks inventory, and ensures cost accuracy.
Conclusion
Use a prep recipe when the preparation step adds complexity, affects cost, or involves multiple teams. Specifically, a prep recipe is necessary when:
- The prep process is complex enough to warrant having the method written down
- The prep adds ingredients that affect the final food cost
- Shrinkage occurs before portioning, which impacts cost
- The prep needs to run through multiple teams
If the prep is simple, intuitive, and doesn’t impact inventory or shrinkage, like shaping burger patties or rolling meatballs, skip the prep recipe and go straight to the serving recipe. This keeps your documentation lean while still capturing the details that matter for cost tracking and kitchen operations.