You’ve priced a dish on a guess before. You picked a number that felt about right, and only found out later, once GST and the real cost of every ingredient were factored in, that the margin barely existed. A menu price built on instinct is hard to walk back once customers are used to paying it. Our recipe calculator works out your true food cost, your GST-inclusive cost, and your profit margin before the dish goes anywhere near a menu.
Steak and Kidney Casserole with Sage Dumplings
Method
Step 1
Preheat your oven to 160 degrees, moderately slow.
Step 2
Dice your steak and kidney into cubes, roughly 2cm x 2cm.
Step 3
Dust steak and kidney in White Wings Plain Flour, shake off excess. Heat half of the olive oil on a medium heat and brown the steak and kidney in batches, and move to another dish.
Explore Goodman Fielder Food Service’s selection of premium wholesale plain flour.
Step 4
Slice your onions and cook in the same pan with the remaining oil and garlic, stirring occasionally until golden brown.
Step 5
Return beef to the pan, and add the chicken stock and bring to the boil.
Step 6
Cook uncovered for two hours, until the steak and kidney starts to tenderise.
Increase the oven to 200 degrees.
Step 7
Roughly chop one third of the baby carrots and add to the mix, stirring through the Praise Tangy Tomato Dressing. Cook uncovered for a further 40 minutes, until beef is very tender and sauce thickens.
Step 8
Place the mix onto a baking dish, mixing through additional Tangy Tomato Dressing to taste. Set aside to wait for the dumplings.
Step 9
Sift the White Wings Self Raising Flour into a bowl and add the grated Parmesan cheese and finely chop the sage.
Step 10
Rub in the butter cubes with your fingers, until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. Season to taste. Add your milk slowly and use a palette knife to mix quickly into a sticky dough.
Step 11
Roll the dough into small balls and place on top of the casserole.
Step 12
Bake in the oven until the dumplings are golden brown and puffed. Serve with the left over baby carrots and steamed green beans.
Ingredients
| Ingredient Name | Qty Purchased | Cost of Goods | Qty Used in Recipe | Total Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| mL | $ | mL | $ 0.00 | |
| each | $ | each | $ 0.00 | |
| mL | $ | mL | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| mL | $ | mL | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| g | $ | g | $ 0.00 | |
| mL | $ | mL | $ 0.00 |
WHAT IS A RECIPE CALCULATOR?
A recipe calculator works out what a dish costs to make and what it needs to sell for to turn a profit. Some tools under that name are really a recipe converter, turning ounces and teaspoons into metric, or a recipe multiplier that scales quantities up or down, or a nutrition calculator returning the energy and carbohydrate count per serve. Ours is a recipe cost calculator. Enter your ingredient costs and servings, and you get a total cost, a cost per serve, and the margin behind your selling price.
HOW TO USE OUR RECIPE CALCULATOR
Enter your recipe name, method and serving size, and the number of servings the recipe makes.
Select “+ Add Ingredient” to build your ingredient list, then enter the quantity purchased and cost of goods for each item.
Enter the quantity your recipe actually uses for each ingredient, in grams, millilitres or each.
Select Calculate to see your total cost across the batch, plus the same figure with GST added and your cost per serve. This is where the calculator divides your total batch cost by your number of servings, converting it into a cost per portion.
Enter a Selling Price per serve to see your Food Gross Profit, Food Markup percentage and Total Generated Profit.
WHY FOODSERVICE BUSINESSES USE OUR RECIPE CALCULATOR
Cafes and quick service kitchens change their menus often, and costing a new dish properly before it launches matters more than costing it quickly. Catering and events businesses price the same recipe at different scales throughout the year, a function for ten one week and an event for two hundred the next. Enter the servings for each job, and the calculator handles that recipe scaling without you reworking your ingredient list from scratch.
Bakeries producing large batches need to know the per-unit cost still holds as bakery ingredient prices shift. Contract caterers working to a fixed per-meal budget, such as aged care or education providers, can check a recipe against that budget before it goes into a wider meal planner or seasonal menu.
Across all of these, the value is the same. You get a cost per serve and a margin you can trust, built from your actual supplier pricing rather than an estimate.
Browse our recipes for menu inspiration, then cost them here before you commit to a price.
WHAT MAKES OUR RECIPE CALCULATOR DIFFERENT
Most recipe cost calculators are standalone software with no link to where you actually buy. Ours sits within Goodman Fielder Food Service, a foodservice supplier. Once you’ve priced a recipe and know your numbers, you’re already talking to the team that supplies the ingredients themselves. If a margin looks tighter than expected, that’s a conversation about ingredient pricing you can have straight away.
If you want to work through pricing on a specific dish or menu, our team can help. Get in touch today.