Altermise

Most cooking apps assume you are starting from a shop. Altermise assumes you are starting from your kitchen. Add what you already have, and the app shows you what you can make right now, ranked by how much of each recipe your ingredients already cover. No planning, no shopping list, no scrolling through recipes you have no chance of cooking tonight. Missing something? Altermise looks at what else is in your kitchen and tells you what will work instead. Some swaps keep the dish exactly as intended. Others change the flavour, and the app tells you which is which rather than pretending every substitute is equal. Most of the time you can cook it tonight instead of shopping tomorrow. Cook Mode is built for actually cooking rather than reading. One step at a time in large type you can read from across the counter. Timers that keep running when you leave the app. The screen stays awake so you are not tapping it with wet hands. What is in the app: Recipes across British, Italian, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, French, Spanish and Middle Eastern cooking, from twenty-minute weeknight food to things worth taking your time over. Dietary filters that actually work — vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, halal and nut-free, derived from the ingredients themselves rather than tagged by hand. Filters for budget, time and difficulty, so you can find something under three pounds a portion or something you can make in twenty minutes. A shopping list that builds itself from the gap between your kitchen and the recipe. Only what you are actually missing. A drink pairing for every recipe, with the reasoning, so you know why it works. Short lessons on the things recipes assume you already know: why salt matters, what resting meat actually does, how to build a pan sauce. Altermise is free. Your pantry, finding what you can cook, substitutions and Cook Mode will always be free. Who is it for? Students, flatmates, and anyone cooking on a budget in a small kitchen with whatever is in the cupboard. It works just as well if you already know how to cook; it just stops you from standing in front of the fridge at seven o'clock with no idea what to make. Cook with what you have, not what you need. Cook with Altermise.