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 · 29 dishes here use it

Out of spinach

Volume that vanishes. A pan-filling pile cooks down to a few spoonfuls, and the water it gives up will dilute whatever it lands in unless you wring it out first.

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

2 of the 29 dishes here that mention spinach list it as optional — 7% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

chard, stems separated and started first

one for one by weight

What it gets you
A soft-cooking leaf with the same mineral note, and the stems are a bonus ingredient.
What it costs you
Speed. Chard leaves wilt like spinach; the stems need five minutes before them.

Instead · 2

frozen spinach, squeezed hard

ten ounces frozen per pound fresh

What it gets you
The right thing for anything cooked, and it is already wilted, which is half the work.
What it costs you
Every raw application, and it must be wrung out or the dish floods.

Instead · 3

kale, sliced thin

one for one by weight

What it gets you
A green that survives longer cooking and holds its shape in a soup.
What it costs you
The silkiness. Kale never goes soft the way spinach does, and it wants more fat and more time.

Where you can just leave it out · 2

These dishes list spinach 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 · 9

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