Dish Requests and Weekly Helpers: Getting Everyone Involved

"Can you make gulab jamun this weekend?"

In most homes, dish requests live in someone's memory. A child mentions a favourite sweet on Tuesday, a grandparent hopes for kheer on Friday, and by the weekend the cook cannot remember who asked for what. People feel unheard, and the cook feels like a short-order restaurant with no order slips.

Degchi has a place for these requests. It sits on the Family tab, right below tonight's vote (which we cover in How to Settle "What's for Dinner?" with a Family Vote).

Sending a request

Find the Requests section and tap Request a dish. A sheet opens with a few simple fields:

• From: who is asking. This is handy when one phone belongs to a parent who is writing down a child's wish.
• What do you want? Free text, with an example to guide you: "e.g. Chicken Karahi this weekend".
• Link a recipe (optional): attach a dish from the Degchi library, such as gulab jamun, kheer or gajar halwa, so the cook can open the exact recipe.

Tap Send request and it appears in the list with the person's name and how long ago it was sent. Before anyone has asked for anything, the section simply says "No requests yet".

Turning a request into a plan

Every request has an Add to plan button. When the cook decides the dish is going ahead, one tap changes it to Planned, with a tick. Now anyone looking at the Family tab can see that the request was noticed and accepted.

It is a small signal, but it matters. A request that disappears without an answer is the thing that makes people stop asking. A request marked Planned tells the person, "I heard you, it is coming."

Who can do what

Degchi gives each family member a role, and the roles are written plainly in the app:

• Owner: manages the family, invites and roles.
• Cook: starts polls, closes votes and plans meals.
• Member: votes, sends requests and edits the pantry.
• Child: votes and sends dish requests.
• Helper: sees the pantry and today's dish, but cannot vote.

Think about what that means at home. A child can ask for their favourite dish without being able to change the pantry by accident. A helper, such as a house cook, can see what is in the kitchen and what is on for today without getting a vote on the family menu. Roles are set by the owner. How to Set Up Your Family in Degchi shows how to invite people and change roles.

This week's helpers

Below the requests you will find This week's helpers. For a new family it reads "No points yet", with a nudge: "Bring items from the market, cook, or keep the pantry updated to earn points."

The idea is a friendly scoreboard for the people who keep the kitchen running: the one who does the market run, the one who cooks, the one who keeps the pantry honest. Points are an early feature in the beta, so treat it as a gentle bit of recognition for now, not a competition. If you have ideas for how it should count, we would like to hear them.

Why requests belong in one place

Requests and recognition might sound minor next to recipes and timers, but they are what make a shared kitchen feel shared. Degchi keeps requests in one place instead of scattered across chats, lets the cook mark them Planned, and uses roles so that each person sees just what they need. A missing ingredient for a requested dish is easy to handle too, because the shopping list is built from your pantry. See Your Shopping List, Built from Your Pantry for how that works, and A Shared Grocery List for the Whole Family: How to Make It Stick for habits that keep it useful.

Give it a try

Degchi is free while it is in beta. If your family has a few dishes it keeps asking for, join the Degchi beta with your Gmail address and put the first request in.