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 · 33 dishes here use it

Out of sausage

Seasoned fat and meat that arrives pre-flavored, so it does double duty as protein and as the base a dish is built on. Squeeze it out of the casing and brown it hard and it behaves like a spice paste.

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 33 dishes here that mention sausage list it as optional — 3% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

ground pork with fennel seed, chili flakes and salt

a pound of pork, a teaspoon of fennel, half a teaspoon of flakes, a teaspoon of salt

What it gets you
Italian sausage, essentially, and better than most of what is in the case.
What it costs you
Ten minutes and the casing, if the casing mattered.

Instead · 2

chorizo or merguez

one for one

What it gets you
A seasoned, fatty meat that renders and flavors everything around it — the actual job in a pasta or a bean pot.
What it costs you
Control. Both are much stronger, so the dish becomes about them.

Instead · 3

mushrooms browned hard with fennel seed and paprika

a pound and a half per pound

What it gets you
The savory, spiced, chunky texture that a sausage was contributing.
What it costs you
The rendered fat, which was doing half the cooking. Use more oil than seems necessary.

Where you can just leave it out · 1

These dishes list sausage 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 · 14

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