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 · 125 dishes here use it

Out of soy sauce

Salt with a savory backbone, so it seasons and deepens in one move. It also burns — added to a hot dry pan it goes acrid, so it wants liquid around it or the heat down.

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

11 of the 125 dishes here that mention soy sauce list it as optional — 9% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

tamari

one for one

What it gets you
Everything, essentially. Tamari is soy sauce with little or no wheat and it is often the rounder of the two.
What it costs you
Nothing worth writing down.

Instead · 2

fish sauce cut with water

two parts fish sauce to one of water, then use half the soy quantity

What it gets you
The salt and the glutamate, which is the actual work soy sauce does in a stir fry.
What it costs you
The malty, fermented-grain sweetness, and it brings a smell that not everyone at the table wants.

Instead · 3

miso thinned with water

a teaspoon of miso in a tablespoon of water per tablespoon of soy

What it gets you
Deep savory body and salt, with more sweetness behind it.
What it costs you
The color and the clarity. Miso clouds a glaze and it can go grainy if it boils.

Where you can just leave it out · 11

These dishes list soy sauce 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 · 35

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

Showing the 30 shortest of 35.

Check what else is in the pan

The company soy sauce 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 soy sauceRank what I can actually cookAll substitutions