The Importance of Standardized Recipes - Healthy School Recipes (2024)

• Blog
• By Catharine Powers, MS, RDN, LD

How would you react if your favorite restaurant meal suddenly tasted different? Or if the frozen macaroni and cheese you reheated looked different? Or if your Mom’s special lasagna just didn’t have the same appeal? Consistency in food preparation, whether in restaurants, from suppliers, or even at home, is one key to customer satisfaction.

Consistency is achieved by using the most important tool in your kitchen – the standardized recipe.

According to USDA, a standardized recipe is defined as 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 same type of equipment and the same quantity and quality of ingredients.”

More simply, a standardized recipe is a complete, specific set of written instructions for cooks to produce consistent, high-quality meals every time!

Consistency

Documenting menu compliance is one of the most important reasons to use standardized recipes. Ensuring that all students receive the proper portion of each menu component is essential. Consistency is the key benefit of using standardized recipes. Consistent taste, texture, appearance, nutrient content, yield and cost lead to an efficient and successful kitchen operation.

The assurance of consistency can also lead to increased employee confidence. The likelihood of mistakes and poor food quality is decreased if the preparation guesswork is eliminated. Don’t all employees want to be proud of the food they serve?

Myths of Standardized Recipes

Some feel that standardized recipes will take away creativity in your kitchen. Actually, recipes can ensure the creativity of the recipe developer, and not allow individual cooks to change the recipes according to their personal tastes.

Another myth is that a recipe that is standardized will ALWAYS work in every single kitchen across the country. According to the USDA’s definition of a standardized recipe it is tested by a “given foodservice operation”. This means that each recipe needs to be tried (and retried) by each operation. Ingredients vary: the tomato sauce that one school uses may be spicier that the tomato sauce that another purchases. Other ingredients will change slightly during storage. For example, pasta and beans may lose moisture over time during storage and therefore require a little more cooking time. Sometimes fruits’ sweetness will vary depending on variety or ripeness and a recipe may require a bit more sweetener. Kitchen equipment will vary too. It seems like each oven in every kitchen has its own quirks and cool or hot spots!

Healthy School Recipes

The recipes on this website have been standardized by the school or organization or company that has provided the recipe. It still needs to be standardized by individual schools. Equipment varies. Ingredients vary. Student tastes vary. Using these recipes will give you a jumpstart on adopting new recipes for your operation, but take the time to standardize these recipes for your operation using your equipment, your ingredients and according to your students’ tastes!