Forum

Your blog post on ras el hanout reminded me of a question that keeps popping up for me: is there any way to distinguish within EYB between the use and the preparation of half-products?

For things like ras el hanout, preserved lemons, mayonnaise, etc. Sometimes you want a recipe to make one of these, sometimes you want a recipe to use all that stuff you made. Common ingredients may be in the ingredient dropdown list and you can include the ingredient for the use, or search string and exclude ingredient (like this, for mayonnaise) for the preparation. But for the more uncommon ingredients this does not work.

Is there a way to do this? And if not, are there plans to make this possible?

Wester - if the "half-products" (love that term) have been tagged as "how to" that may create a mechanism work around; but that label was only introduced in recent times so maybe not so helpful ! I tried it with "preserved lemons" in EYB's recipe library  - excluding "how to" and delivered 4707 recipes ; including "how to" delivered 26 recipes

debkellie is correct - the "how to..." tag is intended to cover recipes for how to make an ingredient (and very specidific instructions on how to do a procedure). Because this tag was added later, after many recipes had been indexed, please do let us know if you spot any recipes that you think should have the tag added.

Thank you for this clarification of the "how to" tag. I hadn't been sure how it was supposed to be used and I had noticed it wasn't used much, so so far I had just ignored it. But I now see how it could be useful.

You can be sure to receive a few e-mails from me about recipes where it should be added or removed.

Ah, now I see how to do this for ras el hanout: Use the spice blend tag. Which hasn't always been used properly either. More e-mails coming your way!

I should have also clarified that recipes for ingredients such as sauces and spice blends will have those tags rather than the How to... tag. So if you wanted to find all the recipes FOR ras el hanout rather than recipes containing ras el hanout you would enter that in the search box then select the Spice / herb blends & rubs filter in the right column - under Recipe types / Misc. There are 212 recipes for the spice blend in the Library. You will see some complete meal recipes - that is because the spice blend is part of the recipe.

In the same way if you wanted to find a recipe for Marinara sauce rather than recipes containing Marinara sauce you would type Marinara sauce in the search box then select Sauces, general in filters - under Recipe types / Side dishes. There are 178 recipes for Marinara sauce in the Library.

Shouldn't the spice blend (etc.) tag only be used if the recipe only tells you how to make the spice blend? So only if the ingredients are allspice berries; cardamom seeds; cumin seeds etc rather than ras el hanout itself?

wester - yes that is what it is for. If you come across a recipe that has the tag but does not contain the ingredients for the blend, please let us know and we will remove the tag.

Jane - isn't it the case that if a recipe has the tag "spice blends, herbs,rubs" it may actually list the compound ras el hanout as a specific  ingredient, eg: an ingredient in a composite blend of other spices/herbs (including ras el hanout) used as a rub....???

Debkelliemember - yes, if ras el hanout is an ingredient in a different spice blend then the tag 'spice / herb blends & rubs' would still be applicable.