Selecting recipes

Put recipes and QuickBites on the Menu, see at a glance what you’re short of, and take things off as you cook them. The menu is shared with everyone in the kitchen and updates live.

You build the menu mostly from your recipes. Each recipe card there has a ＋ Menu button — tap it and the recipe joins your menu, and the plus turns into a check mark, ✓ Menu. A recipe’s own page carries the same button, in its actions row.

You can also add from the Menu page itself, next to what you’re already looking at. Every category in your kitchen has a heading there, whether or not anything’s on it. The ones holding something come first — that’s your week. The rest follow, under a More categories label once your week holds anything, each just a heading and its +, so a category you haven’t used yet is still one tap away. Printouts leave those empty ones off.

Every category heading carries a small +. Tap the one on Breakfast and the add list opens headed Add to Breakfast, showing only that category’s off-menu items. A Show all button under them switches the same list over to everything you can add. A category with nothing left to add says so — “Everything in Breakfast is already on the menu.” — with Show all under it. A category you’ve never put anything in says “Nothing in Breakfast yet.” instead. Add items at the top of the page opens the full list straight away.

The list pops up over the page, with a search box at the top ready to type into. The full list is everything you can add, grouped by category. It covers your off-menu recipes and QuickBites, including categories with nothing on the menu yet, so you can start one from scratch. A QuickBite carries a small QuickBite tag after its name, so you can tell the two apart. Type a few letters to narrow it to matching items — the full list stays grouped by category, hiding non-matching items and any now-empty category. In a category’s own list, typing narrows within that category alone. The arrow keys move between items in the list, wrapping from the last back to the first. Tap an item — or press Enter or Space while it’s focused — and it joins the menu right away and leaves the list. The menu updates live for everyone in the kitchen. Once everything’s on the menu, the list says so. Close it — the ×, the Escape key, the Back button, or a tap outside it — to get back to the menu. If you’ve typed a search, the first Escape empties the box and the second closes the list. The page behind it stays put while it’s open.

Each QuickBite in the list also carries a ✎ at the right of its row. Tap it: the list closes and the QuickBite dialog opens on that item — the same dialog Edit opens from a menu row’s ⋮, Delete included. That’s how you change a QuickBite that isn’t on the menu. Recipes carry no pencil; you edit a recipe from its own page.

Type a name to see New QuickBite: “your search” above the results, even when existing items match. Type the name one of them already carries, though — the same spelling, in any capitalization — and that item comes first instead, with the creation option below every match. Accepting the obvious pick can’t leave you with a duplicate. Tap the creation option to open the QuickBite dialog with that name filled in. A category’s list fills in the category too. Tap Save to create it and put it straight onto the menu. See QuickBites.

When nothing’s on the menu yet, the page points you to your recipes. Add items at the top of the page opens the same list; your categories still list below it, each with its +.

Reading availability, and taking things off as you cook

A recipe with a description shows it under its title, in full — the same text the printed menu carries under the dish, unless a long menu shortens it there to one line. QuickBites don’t carry a description at all.

Every row ends in a ⋮ button. Tap it to open a popover with a Missing and Probably have breakdown of the recipe’s ingredients — “on hand” means a Pantry row whose reminder clock hasn’t come due yet, whether you bought it, answered Have it, or tapped Skip this trip on Groceries, or one you’ve set to Don’t ask — and, below a divider, a Remove from menu action. A row with every required ingredient on hand also shows a small ✓ badge right in the row, so you can see it’s fully stocked without opening the popover. Something you’ve put on your Groceries list and haven’t checked off yet reads as missing, even when its clock hasn’t come due — putting it on the list says you need it. Once you check it off at the store, it counts as on hand right away: checking it off restarts its clock.

Two kinds of ingredient line count differently. An ingredient the recipe marks ; optional still shows up in Missing or Probably have, carrying the same optional pill you’d see on Pantry or Groceries — but a missing one never keeps the row from reading “all required ingredients on hand,” so it never hides the checkmark either. When a line offers a substitute, only the one your kitchen is currently shopping for counts, so having the other on hand doesn’t fill the gap; switch which one counts with the swap chip, which sits on a Pantry row and in an item’s ⋮ on Groceries. Both are written in the recipe format.

Having the whole thing on hand also covers a recipe that asks for a part of it. Lemons in the house mean a recipe calling for lemon zest reads as covered — you can get the zest off a lemon. It doesn’t work in the other direction, and it doesn’t cross between parts: on-hand lemon zest doesn’t cover a recipe that wants a lemon, and on-hand egg whites don’t cover one that wants an egg yolk, even though you buy both as eggs. Your shopping list follows the same direction: put lemons on it and the lemon-zest recipe reads as missing too, but lemon zest on the list leaves your lemons on hand. See Parts you don’t buy on their own.

When you’ve made something — or changed your mind about it — open its ⋮ and tap Remove from menu to take it off. Its ingredients stop counting toward the Pantry and your Groceries list right away.

Mirepoix remembers which weeks each recipe spends on your menu. That’s what powers Mirabel’s forgotten favorites suggestions — recipes that used to be in the rotation but haven’t been on the menu in a while.

Open ⋮ and tap Print to put the week on the fridge. It comes out as a menu, with your kitchen’s name and the week on one line up top. The dishes run in two columns under their categories, each with a QR code that opens its recipe. QuickBites follow in a box after the last category.

Selecting recipes

Add to the menu

Reading availability, and taking things off as you cook

Print your menu

See also