Kitchen & Bar

On this phone

How to get around

The bar under the name is the map. Swipe it sideways if a destination sits off-screen. On Tonight, the button pinned to the bottom cooks the lead dish.

  1. Tonight — What you can cook first, plus drinks that fit the same shelf.

  2. This week — Five dinners from the shelf, urgent things cooked first.

  3. Shelf — Edit what you actually own.

  4. Written methods — Every dish and drink with a method somebody wrote out.

  5. The pantry — Start from one ingredient: what it does, and everything built on it.

  6. Out of it — What to use instead, judged by the job the missing thing was doing.

  7. Photo review — Review a demo shelf photo and confirm every item before adding it.

  8. Flavor Lab — Pairings with a track record: classic matches and the mixology behind them.

  9. Wild cards — Combinations with no tradition behind them, only shared aroma notes.

  10. Send to Occasion OS — Prepare confirmed shelf availability for Occasion OS.

  11. The field — The gap this layer owns.

Keep it on the home screen

  1. iPhone — tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
  2. Android — open the browser menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.

After that it opens as Kitchen & Bar, not a browser tab. Inventory stays on this device.

Substitutions · 31 dishes here use it

Out of berries

Acid and sweetness with almost no body, so they want fat or starch beside them. Frozen are better than out-of-season fresh for anything cooked, and worse for anything raw.

Everything below is judged against that job. A swap that covers it is a swap; one that only looks similar is not.

6 of the 31 dishes here that mention berries list it as optional — 19% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

frozen berries

one for one

What it gets you
Better fruit than the fresh ones most of the year, because they were picked ripe.
What it costs you
Any use where they stay whole. They collapse on thawing, so they go into batters frozen and into sauces directly.

Instead · 2

stone fruit — plum, peach, cherry — chopped

one for one by volume

What it gets you
Sweet-tart fruit that cooks down the same way and suits the same desserts.
What it costs you
The color bleed and the pips, and stone fruit needs more sugar and more time.

Instead · 3

a spoon of jam let down with lemon juice

two tablespoons of jam and a teaspoon of juice per half cup of fruit

What it gets you
Berry flavor and sweetness for a sauce, a drink or a swirl.
What it costs you
Texture and freshness. This works stirred into things and it does not work on top of them.

Where you can just leave it out · 6

These dishes list berries as optional. They were written to work without it, so no ratio is needed and nothing has to be bought.

Where the swap will be tasted · 18

These need it and are short enough that nothing hides: 4 required ingredients or fewer, which makes berries a quarter of what is in the pan. Make the swap a decision rather than a repair.

Check what else is in the pan

The company berries keeps in this library, counted off required ingredients. A swap that argues with the top two is the wrong swap, whatever a chart says.

What to make with berriesRank what I can actually cookAll substitutions