▲ ▼ I need to know what recipes I can make
I am not very creative when it comes to making dinner for my family. I have a lot of recipe books, but it's time-consuming to find a recipe, scan my pantry to see what I have and don't have, figure out if I can substitute ingredients, etc.
Current solutions either let you search by main ingredient, or multiple ingredients without considering you might not have all of them or the right quantity.
Removing my previous comment of Dish Tango after going down a search journey, as this is also a problem I constantly face.
Finally found one - Plant Jammer 2.0 - https://www.plantjammer.com/ . The app is pretty slick. Only thing is there's few unpaid recipe options, otherwise it's $3.49 / month. But it has some cool options, like planning out the meals that you like with a one-click option. Pretty slick UI.
https://endsandstems.com/whats-in-my-fridge-recipe-finder/ I love Ends+Stems and their meal planning workshops!
I've often thought the same thing, i love cooking but find it hard to decide what to cook based on the ingredients i have and i end up making the same thing every time
I would be happy with recipes that say "You would need to buy: X" so if i have 75% of the ingredients i can decide whether to go and shop or not
And regarding the items in stock, what about a wizard based filter that asks what you have, so you would input the main ingredients you have i.e. Onion, Chicken, Pasta, then it would ask Do you have Cream? Yes/no, Do you have Mushrooms, Yes/No, logging these every time to improve the understanding of your larder. It could even ask "Do you still have Mushrooms" if you said yes a day or two ago. It could then make suggestions based on what you have, with a small shopping list to make something else
https://endsandstems.com/whats-in-my-fridge-recipe-finder/!
A reverse Blue Apron - https://www.blueapron.com/ and HELLO FRESH - https://www.hellofresh.com/ ?
I think the problem is really maintaining the ingredients from our kitchen digitally as you have yourself pointed out several services which gives us the recipe if we enter the ingredients.
A good problem to solve nevertheless.
Yes. You could see it as a reverse of either of those sites. And you also identified the main problem I've run into. My thinking is that this service would maintain a "snapshot" of your pantry by several mechanisms: 1) auto-add ingredients to it by scanning your receipts, 2) auto-update / remove ingredients as you use the service, 3) manual curation.
Ideally, there would be very little manual curation, but I think it might prove to be challenging if users decide to make something without using the service. Plus, there is the initial setup that could be a turn-off.
I could see this going slightly off course, as I have a tendency to add more cheese than necessary to some things - blame me if you want. I would wonder how you'd envision this service would account for things that could be accidentally overused or underused.
That is a good point, as I tend to do the same. Several thoughts come to mind:
1. Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on tracking ingredient quantity. Perhaps it isn't necessary.
2. During the "recipe making process", some buttons could be added next to each ingredient that allows you to boost / reduce the quantity of the ingredient so it's at least more accurate as to what is actually being used.
3. When filtering for recipes to make, the suggested recipes could be more "forgiving". Meaning if it thinks you have at least 75% of the ingredients, it could suggest it as an option.
I like the idea of tracking the quantity of the ingredients on hand as then it provides insight into how much of a recipe can be made. It also opens the door to notifying you when you start to run low on something. But, maybe these aren't important.
Options 2 and 3 would require manual curation at some point just to make sure the known pantry reflects reality.