There is an option called "recipe hiding" which means the recipes will be disabled unless you have a big factory GUI currently open. It's on by default, but if it for some reason isn't working, maybe try opening up and then closing a big factory GUI to see if that fixes it.
Its kind of a hacky way to do it. There is no clean way to do what you ask, so I just enable all the big factory recipes when you open a GUI (which enables it for everyone on your force) and then disable it when it gets closed again. There are a few ways it can get closed without triggering the event I believe.
