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 · 10 dishes here use it

Out of kimchi

Sour, spicy and funky, and older is better for cooking. The juice is an ingredient in its own right, and frying kimchi hard before anything else joins it removes the raw edge.

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

1 of the 10 dishes here that mention kimchi list it as optional — 10% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

sauerkraut plus gochugaru and a little garlic

one for one on the kraut, a teaspoon of chili per cup

What it gets you
Fermented sour cabbage with heat, which is the structural description.
What it costs you
The fish sauce and the ginger, and kraut is sourer and less sweet.

Instead · 2

quick-pickled cabbage with chili and garlic

one for one

What it gets you
Acid, crunch and heat in twenty minutes.
What it costs you
The ferment entirely, which is the depth and most of the reason it is in the dish.

Instead · 3

any sour pickle, chopped, plus hot sauce

one for one

What it gets you
The sharp, salty, spicy counterpoint that kimchi provides on a plate.
What it costs you
The cabbage texture and the funk. This is a stopgap and not a fried-rice ingredient.

Where you can just leave it out · 1

These dishes list kimchi 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 · 5

These need it and are short enough that nothing hides: 4 required ingredients or fewer, which makes kimchi 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 kimchi 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 kimchiRank what I can actually cookAll substitutions