Hi Cuong,
I'm doing research to hopefully someday open my own pho place. I've been testing using your recipe from this webpage: /pho-chefs-recipes/beef-pho-recipe-infographic/ and have a question.
I have made changes to the recipe based on my preference and now like to convert it into a "professional" recipe format. I intend to use this format and apply to other recipes I'm researching to build my concept menu. Do you have suggestion on what format is best for use in development, and then later as part of the actual kitchen work for employees to use? You mentioned in other places that it's better to have detail for all recipes from the beginning so that it will be easier to change/update recipes or add new ones later. Appreciate your help.
I'm glad you found the beef pho infographic recipe useful. Generally recipes for use in restaurants should have at least the following 2 areas in detail:
- The ingredients and associated quantities needed to prepare a dish, and
- The specific procedures to prepare or cook for each step of the process.
Depending on how you break down your prep schedule and your general BOH operation, each dish's recipe may be broken down into multiple smaller recipes in order to facilitate smooth and efficient prep production.
For example, you may want to wash and blanch bones in bulk, possibly enough for 2 or 3 batches, then use enough for the one batch you'e going to make now and cool or freeze the rest. This way when the times come for the 2 new batches, you won't have to go through washing and blanching steps. In this case you'd create a separate recipe just for this step (washing and blanching bones). This means you don't always use the complete pho broth all the time.
As you can see, this is one major difference between homecoming and restaurant production. It takes a different planning and cooking process to efficiently serve large volumes in restaurants. Those who sign up with my consulting service will receive direct one-on-one coaching with a lot of in-depth information and detail, in order to develop a full production system for the restaurants. The result will be an official recipe book for the business, plus prep recipes that will serve as references for all prep procedures for the staff to use.
Hope this is helpful, and do feel free to let me know if you have further questions.
@chuynh
Thanks for the info. I'm a bit confused about ingredients vs procedures. Pretty much all recipes I've seen including the infographic mentioned have both of these already. So what am I missing?
It's important to separate out ingredients from procedures.
A. For ingredients, you want to list out each ingredient, identify it clearly so there's no mistake, and the amount for the batch being prepared. For commercial kitchen work, there generally are 3 main units of measure (UM or U/M), namely
- weight (LBS, OZ-wt, etc.)
- volume (GAL, OZ-fl, etc.)
- each or one unit of something (EA, COUNT, etc.)
Obviously, mixing up your UM can turn your food into something completely different.
It's also useful to include the batch size for a give set of ingredients. This way you can have multiple batch sizes (by scaling up or down a main recipe) to allow you to quickly make a different quantity as needed.
B. For procedures, for each associated ingredient, write out (in bullet form is best) the key steps or procedures for a proficient staff to prep that ingredient. for commercial kitchen work, you may have to use one ingredient (example, green onion/scallion) in multiple dishes that requires different ways to prep. You may want to chop 10 bunches of green onion into 1/4" length on a bias for garnishing pho, plus another 20 bunches into 1" length for stir fried dishes.
The point is, if you keep things clear within each recipe, then you can schedule prep assignments to ensure ingredients for each and every dish is covered for your prep staff.
There are still a lot more to this, but hope this clears it for you.
