Sizu Riatto
Kitchen Numbers · Chapter 20

Meal Countdown Planner

Fix the serving time, then count each dish back from it. The longest starts first; a buffer goes at the start.

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Opens on Chapter 20’s example: Tamsin’s dinner at 7:00: roasted squash, rice and greens.

Dishes, one a line: name | preheat | cook | rest | hold (minutes)
Two hands-on jobs (optional)
One oven, two temperatures (optional)
Enter your numbers, then press Work it out.

How it works

Each dish’s start = serving time − resting − cooking; the oven goes on a preheat earlier. A dish that holds (rice keeps warm covered) can start any time in a window as wide as its holding time. Two hands-on stretches that overlap are a clash: move one. With one oven, bake the cooler job first and climb to the hotter one, counting the minutes the oven takes to heat up. A buffer, a share of the whole plan rounded up to a minute, goes at the very start.

From the book, Chapter 20. Dinner at 7:00: the oven goes on at 6:00 pm and the squash in at 6:15 pm; rice on at 6:25 pm (any time from 6:10 pm); greens at 6:52 pm; gravy and greens overlap 3 minutes. One oven: cake in at 5:49 pm, heat raised at 6:24 pm, vegetables in at 6:30 pm, oven on at 5:38 pm (82 minutes). A 10% buffer on a 90-minute plan is 9 minutes. Every chapter and its calculator →

Amounts can be typed as 3, 0.75, 3/4, 1 1/2 or 1½. They’re worked as exact fractions and written as a cook measures them: cups in quarters or thirds, then tablespoons, then teaspoons to the nearest eighth. Everything stays in your browser: no sign-up, nothing stored or sent.