A recipe for a menu

Recipes give detailed step-by-step
instructions for any given item in a menu, however as a single home cook, I
find reassembling these individual recipes to put together a multi-course meal
to be challenging. I wonder how others solve it?

My current method is to write down (in
Excel) all the individual components in each recipe in the same order they will
be served. Next to each I write down the earliest day prior to the meal that
they could be made, or AM/PM on the day. Then reorder the spreadsheet so the
recipes get interleaved according to a day-schedule. Then within each day I
estimate the time of day the component should be started, and re-order the
spreadsheet again. Finally finesse the result, then add a time-line from just
before the guests arrive and continuing through the meal.

There's gotta be an App surely J

Would ChefSteps consider publishing a
recipe for a menu or two?

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Comments

Brendan_Lee_56950

I've struggled with this myself. I haven't found an app that is really suitable for this thing but would love it if there were one in existence.

I usually create a spreadsheet with a worksheet for each dish and then have columns that say 3 days out, 2 days out, 24h out, and firing instructions. Each component or ingredient will have it's own row where the prep will be spread out between the days necessary to make it as well as the quantity of each and a final column with any equipment I will need to complete that component.

GaryT_92514

Thanks @Brendan - adding an equipment column is a good idea - could suggest different groupings according to technique...

Brendan_Lee_56950

Someday i'd like to get fancy and make it so that common ingredients are linked (i think i could do this with macros) so I could click on onions and it would show me every place I would need to prep them.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

Don't you prep all of them in the Kitchen?

Brendan_Lee_56950

Sometimes I like to cuddle up in bed and read my horoscope while prepping jalepenos and onions... yes of course in the kitchen.

reub_50398

It sounds a lot like the information you're trying to capture and represent is what project managers use Gantt charts for (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart). It'd be neat software project to write a tool to parse a recipe and produce a similar chart on the page to go with it.