Here's What You're Really Paying for Produce With Edible Yield Factored in

Once upon a time, in culinary school, we were asked to do something I think most of us had hoped to avoid as aspiring chefs: math. Rather than prepping food for the pan, by precisely cubing potatoes and dicing up the day's mirepoix with our usual knives, we spent the morning with retractable pencils, doing a little light algebra. What we were calculating was the actual cost of ingredients, mainly produce, based on how much of a given item is usable. Consider unavoidable food waste such as banana peels, the cores of bell peppers, the ends of celery, and so on. When you're paying for an item by weight, in culinary math terms the yield, or "edible portion" of a given item factors into its actual cost, which is necessary for chefs to consider when accounting for how to price a dish. Should you be calculating every element that goes into your home-cooked meals? Certainly not. (Or rather, hopefully not? Given the state of the economy and the price of eggs, some of us might have to.) But c ... Read full article.