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 button switches to ✓ On 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 in the header 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. Tap an item 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, 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.

Every version of the list ends with a ＋ New QuickBite button, at the bottom right — a category’s own list and the full list alike — for the times what you want doesn’t exist yet. Tap it and the QuickBite dialog opens; save, and the new item goes straight onto the menu. Opened from a category’s list, it arrives in that category. See QuickBites.

When nothing’s on the menu yet, the page points you to your recipes and offers an Add items button that opens the same list. Your categories still list below it, each with its +.

Reading availability, and taking things off as you cook

Every row ends in a ⋮ button. Tap it to open a popover with a Missing and Have breakdown of the recipe’s ingredients — “on hand” means a Pantry row you’ve bought whose reminder clock hasn’t come due again — 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.

Two kinds of ingredient line count differently. An ingredient the recipe marks ; optional still shows up in Missing or 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 from the row’s swap chip on Pantry or 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. 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.

Tap Print in the header to put the week on the fridge. It comes out as a menu — kitchen name and week up top, dishes under their categories, QuickBites in a box at the bottom.

Selecting recipes

Add to the menu

Reading availability, and taking things off as you cook

Print your menu

See also