Cooking classy meals at home

It's easy to get a craving for something. You see a picture or somebody walking by with an ice cream cone and in a second your craving kicks in, but what do you do about it? Do you give in and take the easy way and buy what you crave for a minor amount of seratonin? Or do you go out of your way to learn how to make it so the next time you crave it you can save the money and make it at home?

A lot of people would argue both are expensive in their own ways, but regardless it's going to be dicussed in this story which will hopefully showcase how you can save money by costing out the recipes you make and im going to explain just how you do that.

The fact is money is tight for most folks now a days and the pandemic hasn't made that any easier, but there is at least a little hope at saving a bit of cash as well as invoking your right to build yourself a substantial income while doing it.

Because money is tight that means that peolpe are having to cut costs more and most commonly the easiest place you would be able to do that is with your grocery bill..well more so now because I will show you the most effective way to cuts costs for groceries while keeping money in your pocket.

Below is the recipe for Hollandaise sauce in the pictures above. I am going to outline how to cost each ingredient in your house so that you can gain a better understanding of the cost of ingredients for your own personal or financial benefit.

Hollandaise sauce

2-3 Shallots, rough slice

1 tbsp Peppercorns

pinch Salt

2 tbsp Apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup White wine

1 bunch Fresh thyme

4 Egg yolks

1 cup Butter

Dash Lemon juice

I have completed a video method of this recipe to make it easier for you to follow along with the method:

This Hollandaise is a little more complex than your standard recipe, but rest assured it is the BEST version you can make at home!

We are going to cost this recipe now. The math involved is a little different than what you might be used to but it will get you the most accurate price per ingredient for your recipes. The first thing you will want to do is determine what measurement your going to be doing the recipe in.

For the sake of this and to make it easier to explain im doing it in grams and ml because the conversion rate is so close that it's thought to be exact. One thing to note though if any of your liquid has a level of density to it the conversion rate will no longer be exact and there will be more math involved to figure that part out. Luckily we don't need to worry about that at all.

So in order to get the cost, we need to take the amount in grams needed for the recipe divided by the amount in grams as purchased and then you multiply that by what you paid for it. Don't worry I was as confused as you are trust me it's easy.

For example, (I will use / to imply you need to divide and * for multiplication. Just to be clear)

Let's say a pinch of salt is equal to 1 g. (1g salt quantity needed for recipe)/(1360g amount in grams as purchased)*($6.99 cost as purchased)

So using that formula in your calculator you get=0.00 51397059(seperated to show you what your cost would be for 1 g salt)

Essentially you move the decimal point over to give you a dollar amount for each ingredient. You do that and then add up all the costs at the end to determine what you can charge should you wish to sell your items.

All this means is that for the recipe you're making it doesn't cost you a dime to add the salt, but the fun thing about that is you can charge $0.05 at the very least even though it doesn't cost you anything. That's just good business.

In order to determine the conversion rate from cups to weight is actually the easiest part. All you do is measure them out the same way, but then take those amounts to a food scale, set it to grams and weigh each ingredient amount. Once you have the weight in grams or whichever unit of measurement you desire you can use the above formula to cost out your ingredients.

You'll need a chicken stock to make risotto and if cost is a concern you need not worry because the chicken stock is quite cost-effective using mostly scraps to make and water. If you wanted to figure out the cost then you would have to weigh the bones and vegetable scraps to figure out your numbers, but because the cost was already covered when you bought the vegetable and chicken for the dish...you would actually make a profit from the chicken stock. If you were to sell it or utilize it otherwise.

I will explain how to calculate cost per portion as well.

Now let's talk about the risotto and the salmon. Ultimately your portion sizes here will determine what you can charge. So for risotto being a side, I would say 2.5 to 3 oz per portion and 5 oz for the fillet of salmon. 3 oz in grams converts to 85.05 grams. However, that's going to be different because of a few things. The weight of the rice, cream, vegetables, cheese, butter. Even the starch in the rice weighs something so it's important to always weigh everything if you plan to cost it out for a recipe. 5 oz salmon fillet would be 140 grams. So using the formula above you can determine a 5 oz portion of salmon costs = $5.37/ portion that likely feels small, but that's one fillet you would get 5-6 per fish depending on size.

$5.37*6= $32.22 so 6 fillets would cost you $32.22

So with all of this in mind including the formula above you now have the tools to effectively cost out recipes you make or create and sell them easily.

In order to get the cost per portion, you will need to take the amounts in dollars of recipe/the number of servings for the recipe.

As an example:

Banana Muffins

273.6 g Flour = $2.39

146.7g Sugar = $1.08

4.6 g Baking Powder = $0.68

5.2 g Baking soda - $ 0.12

3.9 g Salt = $0.15

99.8 g Veg oil = $0.19

1 Egg (all eggs weigh different I charge a base $0.35 per)

234.1 g Banana = $0.50 (about 2 banana)

122.9 g Chocolate chips = $1.50

6.8 g Vanilla

So everything all together equals $7.09 as the cost for this recipe. So it cost $7.09 to make now here's how to determine what you should charge for it.

There are 12 servings in this recipe so take $7.09/12 = 0.59/serving

0.59*12= 7.08 at that price you will never make a profit so what you need to do is this.

0.59*6 = $3.54 $3.54+85%(1st markup is wholesale price)=6.549

Wholesale price= $6.55

$6.55+35% (second mark up is retail price)= 8.8425

Retail price=$8.85

You may have noticed I rounded up there a few times. Because the penny is gone you will always have to round up or down to make it easier to determine ACCURATE costs.

This has to be the best method to cost out recipes in my opinion. It's easy and quick to figure out and can make you quite a nice little profit if you allow it.

I hope this really helps you to gain a better understanding of the math involved in food costing. I am really glad I was able to write this because up until recently this is something I have really struggled with for a long time. It's inspiring to be able to share what I have learned with you as well as how I understand it so that you might do the same and who knows start a career path in the process?

If you're interested in some great cooking videos I do have a YouTube channel you can check out

If you are on YouTube as well then give me a like and a comment and don't forget to subscribe.

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