Food Commodities: Identification, Selection, Storage and Costing
Food Commodities: Identification, Selection, Storage and Costing tests your ability to judge quality, store each category correctly and turn purchase prices into true portion costs. Expect questions naming cuts and species, listing freshness indices, giving storage temperatures, and calculating yield, edible-portion cost and food cost percentage.
Selection indices
- Meat: species colour, firm dry surface, marbling, fat colour, clean smell; check the label for category and age.
- Fish: bright convex eyes, red gills, firm springy flesh, no belly burn, mild sea smell; shellfish must be alive and shells must close when tapped.
- Produce: seasonality, weight for size, turgidity, no bruising, no sprouting; buy to the menu rather than to the offer.
- Dry goods: intact packaging, in date, no weevils, cool and dry.
Storage
- Dry store 10–20 °C, humidity under 60 %, FIFO, nothing on the floor.
- Chilled 0–5 °C; fish 0–2 °C on drained ice; dairy 2–4 °C; raw below cooked.
- Freezer −18 °C or colder, well wrapped against freezer burn; never refreeze thawed food.
- Keep ethylene producers (apple, banana, tomato) away from ethylene-sensitive leafy greens and cucumber; store potatoes dark and separate from onions.
Costing chain
- AP (as purchased) becomes EP (edible portion) after trim. Yield % = EP ÷ AP × 100.
- EP cost = AP cost ÷ yield fraction.
- Portion cost = EP cost × portion weight. Food cost % = portion cost ÷ selling price.
- Cooking shrinkage reduces yield further; account for it separately on roasted and braised items.
Worked example
12 kg whole sea bass at €9.50/kg costs €114. Filleting yield is 45 %, giving 5.4 kg of fillets, so EP cost = 114 ÷ 5.4 = €21.11/kg. A 160 g portion costs 0.160 × 21.11 = €3.38. Garnish and sauce add €0.90, giving a plate cost of €4.28. At a 30 % food-cost target the menu price is 4.28 ÷ 0.30 = €14.27, so the dish is priced at €14.50.
Traps that cost marks
- Costing a portion from the AP price and under-pricing the dish.
- Assuming 100 % yield on fish, meat or vegetables.
- Refrigerating tomatoes and basil, or storing potatoes beside onions.
- Refreezing thawed product or thawing on the bench.