Most recipe apps start from the recipe and send you to the shop. The Kitchen starts from the other end: what’s already in the fridge, the freezer and the cupboard, and which of the recipes you’ve saved you could make with it tonight.
Your shelves, without the bookkeeping
The Kitchen has four shelves — Fridge, Freezer, Pantry and Spice rack — and a list of staples you always want in the house. When a staple runs low it goes onto your grocery list by itself. Getting things in is quick:
- Scan barcodes. Unload the bags keeps the camera open and beeps for each product, so you can put the shopping away and scan it in one go. Free.
- Put things away from the grocery list as you tick them off.
- Type them in, the old way.
- Photograph a shelf or a receipt, and Sorrel reads what’s on it. That one uses Sorrel’s servers, so it’s part of Sorrel Pro — and nothing is saved until you’ve checked the list.
Sorrel never tries to work out how much of a jar is left. After you cook, it simply asks whether that was the last of anything.
What can I make tonight?
With your shelves filled in, every recipe in your library knows whether you can cook it. The Tonight screen gathers the ones you can make right now. Filter by meal and by time, put the things that need using up first, or Allow 1–2 missing to see what’s nearly there. Look at them as a list, by shelf, or One at a time — Next, Next, Cook this. If you are a couple of things short, one tap adds just the missing ones to your grocery list.
Close enough counts
A recipe that asks for scallions shouldn’t say you’re missing something when there are green onions in the fridge. Sorrel knows that scallions and green onions, courgettes and zucchini, and prawns and shrimp are the same thing — and that coconut milk is not milk, and brown sugar is not sugar.
It goes one step further with swaps. If a recipe wants spaghetti and you have penne, Tonight still counts it: “Everything, with penne for spaghetti.” Only swaps that work wherever the ingredient is used count, and never one that breaks your diet or allergies.
On any recipe you can also look up a swap for an ingredient yourself. Sorrel tells you how much to use, what you lose (butter for oil in a cake is not the same cake), and what to do differently — and applying it rewrites the steps for this cook without changing the saved recipe. All of this runs on your phone, for free. The explanations are in English for now.
Something new
Sometimes nothing in your library fits. Something new writes a recipe for your kitchen instead: from what’s on your shelves, what needs eating first, your diet and allergies, and how much time you have.
The first time, it asks how stocked your kitchen usually is — bare, basic or well-stocked — and which cuisines you cook often, so it can assume the oil, salt and soy sauce you never think to write down. A recipe may call for up to three things you don’t have; those are listed up front under You may be short on, with stand-ins. Something new is part of Sorrel Pro. Seeing what you can already cook stays free.
A word of warning, where it matters
A few everyday ingredients are unsafe if they’re not prepared properly: dried kidney beans that aren’t boiled hard enough, raw cassava, bitter almonds and apricot kernels, rhubarb leaves, raw elderberries, ackee, fiddleheads and morels among them. When a recipe or your Kitchen includes one, Sorrel shows a small warning, and tapping it explains how to prepare it safely. The guidance follows food-safety agencies in the US, UK and Canada. It’s free and always on — and it’s guidance, not medical advice.