How we write a recipe for Pantry Hand

Metric first with Fahrenheit beside it, a doneness check for every piece of meat, and ingredient names a search can match. What we do to every recipe, and what we don't.

Khinkali, photographed from above — Khinkali, Georgian & Armenian. AI-generated illustration.

Most of the recipes on Pantry Hand are our home-kitchen versions of dishes people cook around the world. Before one goes on the site it is rewritten into the same shape, so the finder can match it and you can follow it.

Weights, not cups

Amounts are metric: grams for solids, millilitres for liquids. A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 150 grams depending on how it's scooped, so weights are more repeatable. Spoons stay as teaspoons and tablespoons, because they're small enough not to matter. Oven and frying temperatures are in Celsius with Fahrenheit beside them.

A check you can see

Wherever a recipe cooks meat, poultry, fish or eggs, the step says how to tell it's done, usually with a temperature from the US government's safe minimum chart. Dishes meant to be eaten raw or barely cooked, like gravlax, say so and explain the risk.

Ingredient names a search can match

Every ingredient carries a plain name, such as "chicken thigh" or "scallion", alongside the wording on the page, so typing "chicken" finds dishes made with thighs, breasts or a whole bird. Brand names become generic ones.

Diet tags that have to agree with the ingredients

A recipe can only be tagged vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free or dairy-free if its ingredient list agrees. An automated check reads every ingredient for the major allergens and fails the build if a tag contradicts it. When a dish is traditionally made with something that would break a tag, like crab in callaloo, the optional ingredient comes out of the list and a note says how it's usually made.

What we don't claim

We haven't cooked every recipe on the site. Quantities, times and temperatures are careful estimates; taste and adjust.
The photos are AI-generated illustrations of each dish, not pictures of our own cooking.
The allergen lines are worked out from ingredient names and can't see brands or cross-contact. The terms page explains the limits.

If something doesn't work, tell us: the address is at the bottom of every page, and a person reads it.