Adding up the sticker prices gives you the wrong number, and it is wrong in a predictable direction: too low, every time. The reason is that you pay for the whole onion and cook the peeled one. Professional kitchens call the two weights as-purchased and edible portion, and the gap between them is w...
Enter the amount your recipe calls for after preparation — 300g of diced onion means 300g once it is peeled and diced. The yield column then works out how much you actually had to buy, which is always more. Put prices in exactly as they appear on the shelf in your own currency; the symbol at the top right only chooses how they are displayed and converts nothing.
Item
Price
Pack
unit
Used
unit
Yield
TRUE COST PER SERVING
$2.91
$11.65 for 4 servings, counting what you buy rather than what ends up in the pan. Adding the sticker prices alone would have said $8.17, which is 43% short.
FOOD COST
$11.65
TRIM ADDS
43%
AT THE TILL
$18.10
Chicken meat is 73% of the whole recipe. Every other ingredient together comes to $3.17, so shaving pennies off them changes very little. If this dish needs to cost less, it is that one line or nothing — a cheaper cut, a smaller portion of it, or more of everything else around it.
Today you would hand over $18.10, not $11.65. Packs do not come in recipe-sized amounts, so the difference of $6.45 is food left in the cupboard rather than money wasted — provided you use it. If it will not get used, the honest cost of this meal is the larger figure. 1 item marked P is excluded from the bill as things you already have.
| Ingredient | Buy | Sticker | True | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken meat | 1 pack | $5.51 | $8.48 | 73% |
| Potatoes | 1 pack | $0.95 | $1.18 | 10% |
| Onions | 1 pack | $0.66 | $0.85 | 7% |
| Carrots | 1 pack | $0.40 | $0.50 | 4% |
| Olive oil | 1 pack | $0.45 | $0.45 | 4% |
| Tomato paste | 1 pack | $0.19 | $0.19 | 2% |
What this cannot see. Yields vary with the size and quality of what you bought and with how carefully it is trimmed, so the defaults are starting points rather than facts — weigh an item before and after once and you will have something better. Cooking loss is separate again: a chicken breast can shed a fifth of its weight in the oven, which matters for portioning even though you paid for it either way. And nothing here counts your time, the energy to cook it, or the salt and pepper.
THE BREAKDOWN
Recipe costs are almost never evenly spread. One or two lines usually carry most of the total, and they are rarely the ones that feel expensive when you are shopping. Knowing which line dominates tells you whether there is any point substituting at all — and on most savoury dishes the answer is that only the protein matters.
Live calculation · updates as you type
Enter each ingredient with the pack price and pack size from the shelf, then the amount your recipe calls for after preparation. Three hundred grams of diced onion means three hundred grams once diced, not the weight of the onions you pick up.
Set the yield for anything you trim, peel or bone. The typical yields button gives sourced starting points, but weighing one item before and after gives you something far better than any table.
Mark pantry items with the P button. Olive oil and dried herbs belong in the food cost but not in tonight’s shopping bill, and mixing the two makes the bill look absurd.
Read the breakdown before the total. One ingredient usually carries most of the cost, and that tells you whether substituting anything else is worth the bother.
Last updated: August 1, 2026 · Yield method per standard culinary costing · Amounts are prepared weights · Yields are starting points, not facts.