miniChef: cook and master

Most cooking apps hand you a recipe and leave. miniChef stays in the kitchen. It reads the steps out one at a time, waits while you do them, and answers when you ask — because the moment you need help is the moment both your hands are covered in dough. SAY IT OUT LOUD, HANDS STAYING WHERE THEY ARE "Hey miniChef, what's next?" "Hey miniChef, I'm done." "Hey miniChef, how much butter?" "Hey miniChef, can I add chocolate chips?" That last one gets a real answer, not a shrug. Before the tray goes in: yes, at step three. Twenty seconds after: you have about seventy seconds — take it out and stir them in. Three minutes after: too late for the mixture, press them into the top while it's warm. It knows because it is holding the clock. FROM FIRST MEAL TO CHEF Tell it who is cooking and everything changes. A nine-year-old gets one instruction per sentence. A confident cook gets none of the hand-holding and only the warnings that matter. You can change who is cooking mid-recipe, because the person at the hob changes. Every step also says what to watch for — "the edges are golden", "the onion has gone see-through". That is how you stop needing the app. Your profile keeps the count: meals cooked, days in a row, dishes you photographed yourself, and a level that goes from new cook to chef. FOR CHILDREN, WITH THE PART THAT MATTERS TAKEN SERIOUSLY miniChef knows which steps a child should not do alone, and works that out from the recipe itself rather than asking a model to be careful. Deep frying is never handed to a seven-year-old. The oven and the hob need an adult in the room. A sharp knife is flagged for a nine-year-old and not for an adult who has held one before. If it cannot read a recipe's language well enough to be sure, it asks for an adult anyway. WHEN IT GOES WRONG, AND IT WILL Say "it's burnt" and it stops the clock, tells you to get the pan off the heat, and not to stir the burnt part through the rest. Say the pan is on fire and it gives you the emergency number first, then to smother it, and never to use water — because water on burning oil is how a pan fire becomes a kitchen fire. That works without saying the wake phrase. Nobody whose pan is alight remembers a brand name first. NINE LANGUAGES, PROPERLY English, Bulgarian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese. Not translated afterwards — the recipe is written in your language, spoken in it, and the safety warnings were written in it by hand. AND YES, IT COOKS FROM WHAT YOU HAVE Type what is in the fridge and get a recipe built around it. It says what it could not use and why. It counts what you cooked instead of binned. Plan a week and get a short shopping list, because the meals share ingredients. FREE, AND HONEST ABOUT IT Five recipes a day, free, forever — one with no account at all. The guided steps, the clock, the safety gate and anything written in the recipe are free too. Pro adds the part that thinks: open questions like "the dough is sticky, what did I do wrong". You can also earn Pro days by cooking — finish a recipe, cook on five different days, photograph what you made. Recipes are suggestions and allergen information is derived from the ingredient list. Always check labels yourself. miniChef is not a substitute for an adult in the room, and it says so.