Turning a recipe into a sub-recipe, and setting its batch size

Quick answer: If a sauce, batter or stock has landed on your menu as a dish, open it and choose ··· → Make this a sub-recipe, then enter how much one batch makes. It moves to your Sub-Recipes board, and any dish row waiting for it is linked automatically. A sub-recipe with no batch size shows How much does one batch make? — answer it with Set batch size.

Why the batch size matters

A dish that uses a sub-recipe is charged its share of the batch. If Tartare Sauce makes 1.3 kg and Fish & Chips uses 40 g, the dish pays 40/1300 of the batch cost. Without a batch size there is nothing to divide by, so the dishes using it stay uncosted rather than being charged the whole batch.

Making a dish into a sub-recipe

1. Open the recipe from the Menu board.
2. Open the ··· menu (top right) and choose Make this a sub-recipe. On the board you can also use Move to Sub-Recipes from the recipe card’s menu.
3. Under How much does one batch make?, enter the amount and pick the unit — kg, g, L, ml, portions or each (plus lb, oz, gal, qt, fl oz, cup and dozen).
4. Click Save.

You’ll see “[Recipe] is now a sub-recipe”, and how many dish ingredients were linked to it. Only rows still waiting to be linked whose name is the recipe’s name are linked for you — anything else, add yourself (see How to add a sub-recipe to a main recipe).

Changed your mind? A sub-recipe’s ··· menu has Make this a dish (not a sub-recipe). Any recipe using it will then need that ingredient linked again.

Help with the number

The box may offer a starting point:

• Your recipe sheet may say … — a yield read off your original recipe. Click Use to fill it in, then check it.
• Its ingredients add up to … — the total weight or volume of the ingredients. Cooking can reduce it, so check against a real batch. If the recipe mixes weights and liquids (flour and beer, say), we can’t add them together — weigh or measure a finished batch.

The amount can’t be left empty or zero.

Sub-recipes found when you import

When you import a recipe book, Open Pantry spots the batches inside it. If one recipe in the file lists another by name — Fish & Chips uses “Tartare Sauce 40 g” and Tartare Sauce is in the same file — Tartare Sauce comes in as a sub-recipe and the Fish & Chips row is linked to it.

A batch size is only filled in if it’s written on the recipe (“makes 15 L”). The rest show the How much does one batch make? banner. Click Set batch size, enter the amount and Save — every dish using it is re-costed.

If the banner reads Estimated batch size, we’ve estimated it from the ingredients. Click That’s right to confirm it or Change to correct it.

Long recipe books

Scanned or photographed recipe books are now read page by page, so a book with dozens of recipes comes through in full. While it reads, the import shows progress such as “12 of 20 recipes read so far · page 4 of 9”. Up to 30 pages per file and 60 recipes per file are read. If a page looks like it holds more recipes than we could read, or a page can’t be read, the import tells you which page, so you can upload those recipes on their own.