Recipes
A Recipe Is a Promise.
Make Sure It Keeps One.
Every recipe in ChefLife is a living document — versioned, costed, and connected to the price of every ingredient it consumes.
What Actually Happens to Recipes in Real Kitchens
There's a Google Sheet. It was built two years ago when the chef who created it still worked here. It has the original recipes — or close to them. Somebody updated the pulled pork yield after the smoker was replaced, but they didn't update the batch scale. The coleslaw has three versions: the old one, the one with the new vinegar ratio, and the one someone printed and taped to the cooler door.
Nobody knows which one is current. On a Tuesday it doesn't matter. On a Friday night it does.
The supplier changed the case size on your romaine. The new cases yield about 15% less usable product after trim. Nobody updated the yield. The recipe still says it costs $1.40 a portion. It actually costs $1.62. That gap is invisible until someone looks at the period-end numbers and wonders why the salad program is bleeding.
The prep cook who's been here four years makes it right. The new hire makes it the way it was explained to them on day two. Both versions leave the pass. Both are called the same thing on the ticket.
A Recipe Change Is Not an Edit. It's a New Version.
ChefLife treats every recipe like professional software: with MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning. Not because it's clever, but because it maps exactly to how recipe changes actually work in a kitchen.
1.0.0 → 1.0.1
"Note on the board"
Typo corrected. Formatting fixed. A clarifying word changed. Nobody re-reads it. Nobody needs to. The dish hasn't changed. The cost hasn't changed. It's a silent correction that respects the team's time.
1.0.x → 1.1.0
"Pre-shift mention"
New section added. A step refined. The finish temperature updated after QC found consistency issues. Worth a read. NEXUS flags it for the team. The dish is still the dish — but something real changed and the kitchen needs to know.
1.x.x → 2.0.0
"All-hands meeting"
New protein. New technique. A complete reformulation. Everyone re-reads it. Everyone acknowledges it. The old version is archived — not deleted, never deleted — and the new version becomes the standard. This is a contract change, and it requires a signature.
The recipe is a contract between the kitchen and the guest. Every version of that contract is preserved, linked forward and backward, so you can always prove what was standard on any given day — and why it changed.
Nothing in ChefLife is ever silently erased.
Everything a Recipe Actually Needs to Be
Most recipe tools give you ingredients and method. That's where the dish starts. ChefLife is where the dish lives — in every dimension a professional kitchen needs to document.
Recipe Info
Name, type, category, ingredient list with costs, revenue channel. The foundation. What it is and what it costs to make it.
Instructions
Steps, stages, and timing. Written once, written right. Not in someone's head. Not on a laminated sheet that's been in the cooler since 2019.
Production
Prep time, cook time, rest time. Yield weight and yield percentage. Internal temperatures. The numbers that make a recipe repeatable across cooks and shifts.
Labels
Label requirements and printer configuration. What goes on the container. What the team needs to read before service. Date, content, allergen warnings — printed, not assumed.
Storage
Which cooler. What container. Shelf life in days. Temperature ranges. The difference between a dish that's safe and one that silently drifts toward a problem.
Stations
Which kitchen stations execute this recipe. Which equipment they use. Routing matters during service. When a station goes down, you need to know what moves with it.
Quality
Visual standards. Texture. Taste profile. Aroma cues. The pass criteria that a new cook can actually use instead of "you'll know when it's right."
Allergens
Three-state allergen tracking that inherits from ingredients and stations. Contains. May Contain. None. Pinned to the recipe version — so when the recipe changes, the allergen declaration changes with it.
Media
Photos, videos, plating references. The visual standard that answers "what should this look like when it leaves the pass?" without requiring a chef to be standing next to every cook every service.
Training
Skill level requirements. Certifications needed. Safety considerations. Onboarding context. The information that turns a new hire from a liability into a contributor.
Versions
The full version history. Every MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH change, timestamped and attributed. Who changed it. What changed. Why. The audit trail that protects the kitchen and proves the standard.
Tab-level change tracking shows amber indicators on any tab with unsaved edits. A floating action bar tells you exactly which tabs are dirty before you save.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
You don't cook with what you buy. You cook with what survives prep. That gap — between purchase weight and usable weight — is where a lot of kitchens quietly lose money.
If your pork shoulder yields 62% after trim and cook loss, then every ounce in the recipe costs more than the invoice price suggests. ChefLife tracks that yield percentage at the ingredient level and applies it when calculating recipe cost. The number in the recipe is the real number — not the optimistic one.
Every master ingredient in ChefLife lives in three dimensions: how you buy it, how you count it, and how you use it in a recipe. The system converts between them automatically. You enter a recipe in ounces. Your supplier invoices you in pounds. Your inventory is counted by the case. ChefLife does the math across all three — and it does it again every time a price changes.
When a price changes on an invoice
- 1 Master ingredient updates Cost per recipe unit recalculated immediately
- 2 Recipe ingredients cascade Every recipe that uses this ingredient is updated
- 3 Recipe total cost rolls up The sum recalculates across all ingredient lines
- 4 Margin alert fires Dashboard flags dishes that have dropped below target
"When the price of your mise en place changes, your recipe cost changes with it. Not at month-end. Now."
No spreadsheet refresh. No manual recalculation. Just truth.
One Recipe. Any Quantity. The Math Is Done.
A recipe is written for a standard yield. Catering order comes in for 200. A prep cook needs to make three times the standard batch for the weekend push. The numbers change. The relationships between ingredients don't.
ChefLife scales the entire recipe — ingredients, yields, timing estimates — to any batch size you specify. And because costs are connected to master ingredients, the cost at scale is accurate too. You're not multiplying a number you think is right. You're multiplying a number that's live.
This matters most for the prep items that feed your final recipes. Your house BBQ sauce. Your stocks. Your braises. The things that get made once and consumed across a dozen menu items. When the batch scales, the cost of everything downstream scales with it.
House Pulled Pork — Yield
Costing updates live when ingredient prices change
Recipes Consuming Recipes
A final menu item isn't built from raw ingredients alone. It's built from your prep. Your stocks, sauces, rubs, and braises each have their own cost — assembled from the raw ingredients that go into them.
Layer 0 — What You Buy
Layer 1 — What You Make
Layer 2 — What You Sell
When pork shoulder goes up $0.30 a pound at the next invoice, that number flows from the raw ingredient through the prepared recipe and arrives at the final sandwich cost automatically. The $4.18 becomes $4.41. The margin drops 2.3 points. The alert fires before the next service.
The craft deserves better than a spreadsheet.
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