Space for Delicatessen

Meal time!

A small warning at this point: This next article could whet your appetite – or even make you ravenous. Seven talented Vorwerk employees take us into a world of delicacies: Cookidoo® recipe development.

Anyone who calls up a recipe on Thermomix® in their kitchen at home probably has no idea how many people have contributed to its development and publication. In every single recipe that appears on Cookidoo®, the official Thermomix® recipe portal, in cookbooks and magazines, there is not only passion and heart and soul, but a lot of nutritional knowledge, cooking expertise and technical know-how.

Seven experts who not only know a lot about good food, but also its presentation: Wiebke, Andrea, Katarzyna, Mari-Bel, Diana and Maximilian. Together with many international colleagues, they develop the delicacies that are recreated around the world by an enthusiastic community.

How complex is the process behind a new creation? We learn the answer at Vorwerk’s Global Recipe Center (GRC) that opened in 2019. Here in Wollerau, Switzerland, beautifully situated on the shores of Lake Zurich, Margarida Ferrador, Head of Recipe Business, and GRC Manager Isaac Ramos pull together the threads of international recipe development.

Only a few new recipes are developed here, however. Most come from 16 international teams based in Poland, Italy or Germany, for example. But no matter which country the new recipe comes from: The process from idea to publication, which led to 300 new culinary highlights last year alone, is always the same. It’s best if the professionals simply explain it themselves.

Is your stomach grumbling already?

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recipes can be found on Cookidoo® worldwide.

While you are reading this text, one more has probably just been added, so it’s 90,001.

The process of creation

From initial research and creation to the final quality control: Seven process steps lead to a lamb’s lettuce with fried herb mushrooms. Or a Pulled Chicken Burger. Or the cashew-banana booster. Or...

Easter, Christmas or the barbecue season – many themes come up again every year. How does Wiebke Ott keep coming up with new ideas?

“My goal is to provide simple and delicious recipes that customers enjoy and love to recreate.”
— Wiebke Ott, recipe developer

"Drafting is the phase in which an initial rough recipe idea takes shape. We all work very individually during this process. Some make handwritten notes first, but I prefer to retreat with my computer and work directly in our Thermomix® software.

I check the composition of the dish in terms of vitamins, protein, fat and other ingredients, and then sometimes change the ingredient list a bit more.

Katarzyna Sykalo is a recipe developer from Vorwerk Poland who moved to the GRC in 2019.

So far, I have drafted around 200 recipes. This experience is very helpful, because you have to pay attention to many details in new recipes, the requirements of the Thermomix®, for example. The better the drafting, the easier the next step in the process, where we cook the recipe again and again in the test kitchen, try out small changes and optimize it.

We want our recipes to even make people happy who can't actually cook. But we also want to offer added value: People who use our recipes should also be able to save energy and reduce waste. What I really like about my job is the creative side. For instance, I get a great feeling when I hear that someone in Mexico has copied my recipe and enjoyed the result."

We want our recipes to even make people happy who can't actually cook. But we also want to offer added value: People who use our recipes should also be able to save energy and reduce waste.
— Katarzyna Sykalo, recipe developer

Creation and Improvement

Go for it with the Thermomix®: The recipe idea is tried out and tasted in many different variations in the test kitchen, individual preparation steps are repeatedly modified and discussed with colleagues. Recipe developer Andrea Liuzzo from Vorwerk Italy lets us take a look at his fingers – and into the pot.

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Vorwerk Italy has already published 9,000 recipes

Italian cuisine is particularly popular in the international Cookidoo® community beyond the country’s borders.

Chef and nutritionist Andrea Liuzzo has been working for Vorwerk Italy for seven years. His specialty: desserts and breads.

"Since we develop the recipes several months in advance, sometimes shopping for ingredients isn’t that easy: Try finding cherries in the winter!"
— Andrea Liuzzo, recipe developer

Test, test, test – and then test again. Before a recipe is published for the worldwide Thermomix® Community, it has passed extensive test cooking and tasting. Every detail is checked and discussed.

Guided Cooking

Now it's time for programming: The recipe is broken down into individual steps using a special software program, with a view to the possibilities of the Thermomix® in a sequence that is as efficient as possible. Maximilian Kessler from Germany, who develops recipes for Vorwerk Switzerland, explains the process.

"Guided Cooking is a kind of navigation system, as in a car. It shows the way by explaining the individual steps of cooking."
— Maximilian Kessler, recipe developer

The main goal of Guided Cooking? To put yourself in the shoes of the people who use the Thermomix® and think ahead to the individual cooking steps. These steps are entered into specially developed software and transferred to the appliance. They then appear in the form of photos, tutorials, overlays of time, quantities and other notes on the appliance’s display. So the hungry folks in the kitchen can simply click their way through at home. After all, the recipes are not just delicious, but also simple and easy for anyone to cook.

The baker and chef Maximilian Kessler appreciates the exchange with international colleagues.

languages:

3 languages: Nearly all recipes from Vorwerk Switzerland can be found in German, French and Italian.

End-user Testing

The new recipe is tasted outside Vorwerk for the first time: Mostly external testers cook it and evaluate it based on predefined criteria. The developers then use this feedback to optimize their creations again before they are published. Three questions for the Spaniard Mari-Bel Giorno from the GRC Vorwerk International.

1. What is the most important thing in End-user Testing?
Finding out whether a recipe works, whether the timing is correct, whether all the necessary utensils are listed, and other rather technical details. Whether the dish tasted good is secondary for us, because this question is very individual.

2. What is the procedure?
Our testers receive an email with the recipe and a deadline. This is accompanied by a list of ingredients and a link to an online form where they can answer questions, note comments and upload photos. This feedback is enormously important to us. Sometimes we also send the recipe to testers in other countries if it could be difficult to implement there, because ingredients such as flour are of a different nature, for example. We then fine-tune the recipe until it really works in all countries.

3. Which of your own recipes are you particularly proud of?
My spare ribs with coffee sauce. Everyone told me that this couldn’t work, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

"I receive one to three recipes a week. I like testing because I like to help others enjoy cooking, too. Plus, you always learn something new and get inspiration for your own cooking."
— Isabella Ritter, end-user tester

Food Photography

The recipes are now ready for publication – what's missing is a photo that makes you want to cook. That’s why experts stage the creations for Cookidoo®, cookbooks, magazines and much more. The British photographer Diana Moschitz from the GRC gets in front of the camera for a change and tells us what’s important.

Tempting and inspiring – that’s how Vorwerk’s food photos should be. It is important to the team that they look natural at the same time. After all, the viewers should not be awestruck, but rather feel like cooking them again.

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Diana Moschitz estimates that she has already photographed 5,500 dishes in her three years at the GRC.

She finds vegetables and fruits in bright colors particularly photogenic – risotto and meatloaf, on the other hand, are a real challenge for her.

“No fake! Working with real food is one of the core values in our team.”
— Diana Moschitz, food photographer and stylist

Completion and Quality Control

A final quality control comes at the end of the creation. Then the recipe can be published. Optimization is always possible, however. Katarzyna Sieradz, Leader of the Recipe Development and Marketing Team at Vorwerk Poland, reports on the finale.

“I love this job. I have definitely turned my passion into my profession here!”
— Katarzyna Sieradz, recipe developer

Three key questions for final quality control:

Are the texts linguistically correct and the individual work steps clearly formulated?
Are more photos or tutorials needed to explain complicated cooking steps?
Does the recipe enable a good experience on all channels, i.e. on Cookidoo®, in the app, in print products and in all other publications?

Once all these issues are resolved, the recipe is published.

End of the story? No, because then it’s up to people around the world to recreate the recipe with their Thermomix®.

The recipe teams then check statistics on retrievals of the recipe as well as ratings. Depending on the feedback, they review the recipe again and optimize it if necessary – until it not only fills you up, but also makes you happy.

Now you’re hungry, aren’t you?