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 · 11 dishes here use it

Out of tomato paste

Concentrated sweetness and savory depth, and it is raw out of the tube. Fry it in the pan until it darkens a shade before liquid arrives — that minute is most of what it is for.

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

3 of the 11 dishes here that mention tomato paste list it as optional — 27% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

canned tomatoes reduced hard in the pan

half a cup reduced to a tablespoon

What it gets you
The same concentrated tomato, made rather than squeezed, and it browns the same way.
What it costs you
Ten minutes, and the pan is busy while it happens.

Instead · 2

ketchup

twice as much

What it gets you
Concentrated tomato with sweetness and acid already in it, which suits a marinade or a glaze.
What it costs you
Control. It brings sugar and vinegar, so pull both from elsewhere.

Instead · 3

sun-dried tomatoes, blitzed

three or four per tablespoon

What it gets you
Deep concentrated tomato flavor with more sweetness and a little chew.
What it costs you
The smoothness, and they will not caramelize into the fat the way paste does.

Where you can just leave it out · 3

These dishes list tomato paste 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 · 1

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