Recipe prep steps (flow table)

With prep steps, a recipe gets a flow table in the “Cooking for Engineers” format: ingredients on the left, steps on the right as merged cells. You read from left to right and see at a glance which ingredient joins at which step.

Kitchen monitor add-on: Prep steps are part of the kitchen monitor add-on, together with the flow table, the “Recipes” appendix on the production list and prep steps in the AI assistant. Without the add-on, the Recipe section shows a note with a link to the add-on in place of the Prep steps, and the print dialog has no Print recipes with preparation checkbox. Prep steps you have already entered stay saved and are back as soon as the add-on is active.

Create prep steps and assign ingredients

1. In Inventory, open a product of type Recipe and go to the Recipe section. The ingredients must already be entered (see Creating & using recipes).
2. In the Prep steps section, click Add step and type a short step, e.g. “melt” or “bake 170 °C”. Short steps read best in the table. You can add up to 30 steps. While you type, the field suggests steps that already exist in your other recipes. Press Enter to add a new step directly below.
3. Reorder the steps by dragging the handle or with Move up and Move down. Delete step removes a step; ingredients assigned to it are left without a step.
4. For each ingredient, pick the step at which it joins in the field added at.
5. Below, the preview shows the flow table in the recipe’s base quantity. A warning lists ingredients that are not yet assigned to a step. Tap a step in the table to highlight the ingredients added at that step; tap it again to clear the highlight. This also works in the kitchen monitor and the staff portal.
6. Click Save. Univents saves the product first, then the prep steps.

Note: prep steps need at least one ingredient. Without an assigned ingredient, no table appears in the kitchen.

Semi-finished products and side strands

If an ingredient is itself a recipe (e.g. a sauce), the table marks it as a semi-finished product. You model a side strand that runs in parallel to the main dish as a semi-finished product: create it as its own recipe with its own prep steps and add it as an ingredient to the main recipe.

In the Kitchen monitor and the Staff portal, tap a semi-finished product in the Steps tab to see its own prep steps, scaled to the amount the main recipe needs. If the semi-finished product has no prep steps, its ingredients and preparation text appear instead. Use Back or the path at the top of the dialog to return to the main recipe. You can open up to three levels this way.

Two known limits

• An ingredient that is taken out and added again later. An ingredient belongs to exactly one step. If it joins again later, write that into the step text, e.g. “add the meat back”.
• A shared ingredient. If the same ingredient is needed in two steps (e.g. flour for the pre-dough and the main dough), it appears with its total quantity at the first step.

Where the table appears

• Kitchen monitor (add-on module): the recipe dialog has a Steps tab with the same table, scaled to the quantity needed. The quantities match the Ingredients tab. On a phone the table appears as a list; use the Table | List switch to change the view. See Kitchen monitor.
• Staff portal: in the Kitchen section, the recipe dialog shows the same steps (see Staff portal).
• Production list: in the print dialog, tick Print recipes with preparation. Univents then adds a Recipes appendix to each sheet, with the flow table, or a list for very wide or long recipes. Recipes without prep steps appear with their ingredients and preparation text. Without the checkbox, the printout stays as before. See Creating production lists.

Duplicating and simultaneous editing

• Duplicating a recipe: the prep steps are copied along. If that ever fails, Univents still creates the copy and reminds you to re-enter the steps in the copy.
• Two people at the same time: if someone else has changed the prep steps in the meantime, Univents shows “The prep steps were changed in the meantime.” You then choose Reload (your changes will be lost) or Save my version anyway.

AI assistant

With the kitchen monitor add-on, the AI assistant (chat and Claude connector) can read and set the prep steps of a recipe.

FAQ

Why does the “Recipe” section show only a note instead of the prep steps? Prep steps are part of the kitchen monitor add-on. The link in the note takes you to the kitchen monitor, where you can try or book the add-on. Prep steps you have already entered stay saved.

Why is there no “Steps” tab in the kitchen monitor? The tab only appears if the recipe has prep steps with at least one assigned ingredient. If it does, Steps is the default tab; otherwise Ingredients stays active. The kitchen monitor is also an add-on module.

How long can a step be? At most 200 characters. Shorter steps read better in the table.