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 · 90 dishes here use it

Out of stock

Body, not flavor — that is the part people get backwards. A good stock makes a sauce cling and a soup taste finished; it does not make a bland dish interesting, and it will not save one.

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

What to reach for

Instead · 1

water plus salt and something savory

the same volume, half a teaspoon of salt per cup, plus a spoon of miso or soy

What it gets you
More than people expect. Most of what stock contributes to a weeknight dish is salt and glutamate.
What it costs you
Body. Real stock carries gelatin, and a sauce reduced from water will never go glossy the way one reduced from stock does.

Instead · 2

a bouillon cube or a spoon of concentrate

as the package says, then taste before adding any more salt

What it gets you
The savory backbone directly, and it is what most restaurant kitchens are quietly doing anyway.
What it costs you
Salt control, mostly. Season the dish at the end or not at all.

Instead · 3

the water the vegetables or pasta cooked in

one for one

What it gets you
Starch and dissolved flavor, and pasta water in particular does the emulsifying job stock was standing in for.
What it costs you
Depth. This works in a pan sauce and it does not carry a soup on its own.

Where you can just leave it out · 6

These dishes list stock 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 · 19

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