DinnerSorted
Meal planning
What should I cook tonight? A two-minute way to decide
Quick answer
Ask three questions in order: how long have I got, what in the fridge needs using up, and how much effort can I face? Then pick from a short list of dinners you already know how to make that match the answers. If nothing fits, fall back on a five-ingredient standby like an omelette, a stir fry or pasta with whatever veg is left. To stop asking every night, decide the week's dinners once, in advance.
It's 6pm. Someone asks "what's for dinner?" and the answer, again, is a long stare into the fridge. You have hundreds of saved recipes somewhere and none of them come to mind.
The problem isn't a lack of ideas. It's too many ideas, at the worst possible time. The fix is to narrow the choice fast.
Answer three questions, in this order
1. How long have I actually got?
Be honest. Not "how long would I like to spend", but how long until people need feeding. This cuts your options more than anything else.
- Under 20 minutes: eggs, stir fries, pasta, wraps, leftovers, freezer meals.
- 20–40 minutes: most weeknight recipes, traybakes, curries with a jar or paste.
- More than 40 minutes: anything, including something new.
2. What needs using up?
Open the fridge and find the thing that'll go off first: half a pepper, the chicken that's on its use-by date, the bag of spinach turning to slime. Build dinner around that. WRAP estimates UK homes threw away 4.7 million tonnes of edible food in 2021, much of it because it wasn't used in time.
3. How much effort can I face?
Some nights you can cook from scratch. Some nights you can manage a pan and a kettle. Choose accordingly, without guilt. A simple dinner you actually make beats an ambitious one that turns into a takeaway.
Dinners that use up almost anything
When the fridge is full of odds and ends, reach for a format rather than a recipe. These take whatever you've got:
- Omelette or frittata: eggs plus any veg, cheese or cooked meat.
- Stir fry: any veg, any protein, soy sauce, garlic, noodles or rice.
- Pasta: a tin of tomatoes or a jar of pesto, plus whatever veg needs using.
- Fried rice: cold leftover rice (stored safely), egg, frozen peas, anything else.
- Soup: onion, stock, and every tired vegetable in the drawer, blended.
- Traybake: chopped veg and sausages or chicken thighs, one tray, 40 minutes.
Keep a list of five fallbacks
Write down five dinners you can make without a recipe, from things you usually have in. Stick the list on the fridge or in your phone. When you can't decide, pick one. For example: eggs on toast with spinach, pesto pasta with peas, a jacket potato with beans and cheese, a freezer curry, and a cheese toastie with tomato soup.
Search your recipes by ingredient
If your recipes are saved somewhere searchable, search by the ingredient that needs using up rather than scrolling. "Courgette" will turn up three recipes you'd forgotten you saved.
How to stop asking every night
The real fix is to make the decision once a week instead of seven times. Spend 15 minutes, on a day you're not tired, choosing four or five dinners for the week and buying the ingredients. Then "what's for dinner?" has an answer before anyone asks it. A week view also makes balance easier: you can see at a glance whether most dinners include veg, as the NHS Eatwell Guide suggests.
Our weekly meal plan template makes this a fill-in-the-blanks job, and the beginner's guide to meal planning explains the routine. Batch cooking on a weekend helps too: see how to batch cook for the week.
How DinnerSorted answers "what's for dinner?"
I make DinnerSorted, so here's the plug, and the honest version of it. You save the recipes you actually want to cook, from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, websites or a cookbook photo. Then you can search them by ingredient when you need to use something up, or build a whole week of dinners from them in one tap and swap the nights that don't suit. The grocery list for the week builds itself.
Planning and the grocery list are free on iPhone, and the free plan includes three automatic recipe imports a month. Unlimited imports come with DinnerSorted Pro, which has a free trial.
Questions people also ask
What can I cook with what I have in the fridge?
Start from the ingredient that will go off first, then think of a format that takes almost anything: an omelette or frittata, a stir fry, a pasta sauce, fried rice, a soup or a traybake. Searching your saved recipes by that ingredient is quicker than browsing.
What is a quick dinner when I'm tired?
Something with five ingredients or fewer that you've made before: eggs on toast with greens, a jacket potato with beans and cheese, pasta with pesto and peas, or a freezer meal you batch cooked earlier.
Why is deciding what to eat so hard?
Because it lands at the end of the day, when you're tired and hungry, and there are too many options. Narrowing the choice (to what you've got time for and what's in the fridge) makes it much easier.
Is there an app that tells me what to cook?
Recipe apps that let you search your own saved recipes by ingredient are the most useful, because they only suggest things you already want to make. DinnerSorted does this on iPhone, and can also plan the whole week so the question is settled in advance.
Sources
Outside facts in this guide link to their source. The advice and examples are our own.