Yvonne Glasgow
You’re at home and you don’t want to go to the store, but you do want a tasty meal. That’s where use-what-you-have cooking tools really shine. Cook up something delicious using what you have on hand.
You have food in your pantry and fridge, but you don’t necessarily know how to combine it to make something. Enter these handy tools that have you input what you have and they show you what you could make.
There are a plethora of websites and apps just waiting to help you create new dishes without a quick trip to the grocery store. Even if it doesn’t seem like you have enough of anything to make a decent meal, you might be surprised.
SuperCook
Become a super sook with SuperCook, the website or app. According to the website, the app will give you much more to create with the ingredients in your fridge and pantry. You can pick your ingredient categories, select the ingredients you have, and you get recipe suggestions. You can also pick from more ingredient selections that pop up, which will increase your recipe options.
MyFridgeFood
MyFridgeFood wants to know what’s in your fridge. Once you check the ingredients you have off of the site’s limited “quick kitchen” list of ingredients, the site will give you some choice recipes. You can also choose to go through their complete ingredient list.
Yummly
Yummly gives you recipes to choose from based on your choice of a popular ingredient. While you don’t tick off boxes to determine what you can make with what’s in the pantry, you can still easily find meals to make with your main ingredients. They also offer featured articles about what produce is in season each month. Yummly comes with a monthly fee ($4.99), but you can try it out for 90 days for free.
Epicurious
Epicurious is an app from CondeNaste Digital that allows you to search for recipes by the ingredients you have on hand, by what’s in season in your area, and even by the types of dishes that you’re looking to cook.
AllRecipes
Where else would you expect to find all the recipes you need for the food you have on hand? Allrecipes isn’t just an excellent place to search for your favorite recipes; you can also enter in the keywords, choice ingredients, and even ingredients you want to exclude (perfect for people for food allergies).
Cookpad
Cookpad is like social media for people who like to cook. Once you set up your account, you can share your own recipes. Even without an account, you can enter your available ingredients into the search bar and find member-submitted recipes to try out in your own kitchen.
