What to make for dinner with what you already have.
The short answer
What can I make for dinner with what I have?
Tell Just Add what you already have — “half a cabbage, some eggs, rice” — and it hands back one named dinner built around it, plus the one or two things that turn it into a meal. Not a list of forty recipes to choose between: one plate, with everything you already own already in it, and the option to change any part of it.
Why looking it up makes the evening worse
The problem at six o’clock is almost never that you do not know enough recipes. It is that you have already made a few hundred small decisions today and this one is somehow the one that will not go. So you open something, type in what is in the fridge, and get handed forty results — which is another decision, in a longer queue, at the worst possible moment.
A list is not an answer. It is the same question again with more options attached. And the honest version of what most people do next is close the app and eat toast, which was always a fine thing to eat and did not need forty results to arrive at.
Just Add is built to end the question rather than restate it. You say what you have; it says what you are having. If you do not like it, changing it is a tap and costs no waiting — but you are changing an answer, not choosing one.
What you get instead
One dinner, in about a second, built around the food you already own.
It starts from what is actually in there
“Half a cabbage, some eggs, a bit of rice.” Not a pantry you have to set up first, not a checklist of two hundred ingredients to tick — the sentence you would say out loud if somebody rang and asked. Whatever you name is in the dinner; it is the thing being built around, not a filter being applied.
One dinner, not forty results
You get a named meal — “cabbage and egg fried rice, with spring onion and a spoon of chilli oil” — and a line for each addition saying what it brings and why you will like eating it. Deciding between forty near-identical recipes is the part of the evening that was already hard. That part is done for you.
Don’t fancy it? Say so
Every answer arrives with genuinely different options already inside it, so swapping a part costs nothing and no waiting. Or say what you want in your own words — “something crunchy”, “I can’t face rice again” — and the whole plate is rebuilt around it.
If something is missing, it becomes a list
The plate knows what you already said you have. Anything you don’t is a short list in aisle order, on your Lock Screen for the shop on the way home — never a reason you cannot cook tonight.
Here’s what rounds it out —
Pesto pasta with a fried egg and wilted spinach
The egg goes glossy over the top and the spinach wilts down to almost nothing.
Three evenings, and what came back
Nothing here is a cheffy version of what you said. It is what you said, finished.
You said
“half a cabbage, some eggs, rice”
You get
Cabbage and egg fried rice
The eggs go in at the end so they stay soft, and a handful of peanuts on top gives it the crunch fried rice usually gets from something you have run out of.
You said
“a tin of chickpeas and not much else”
You get
Crisped chickpeas on garlic toast
Anything creamy underneath — yoghurt, hummus, even soft cheese — turns a tin of chickpeas into a plate rather than a snack, and it takes the same ten minutes.
You said
“i genuinely don’t know, i just don’t want to think”
You get
A plate anyway
You do not have to have an idea first. Say that, and it will pick something ordinary from what it knows you like and hand it over. Changing it afterwards is one tap.
Say it however you have a hand free
One box, three ways in, and no mode to pick first. Speech is transcribed on your phone and never leaves it; a photo goes straight to the model and is never saved anywhere.
One box, no mode to pick
Four things it will never do to you
It can only ever add. Nothing here suggests eating less of something, skipping it, or swapping it for a version the app prefers. Subtraction is not switched off — it was never built.
You will never see a number. No calories, no macros, no servings, no score, no day you can fail. The only amounts you will meet are the ones in a recipe, next to the rice.
Allergens are a hard line. Anything you cannot eat is gone before a suggestion is written, and the finished answer is read again before it reaches you.
It knows when not to answer. If what you type suggests you are struggling, it stops being a food app: a warm message and real professional support come back instead of a meal.
These are not promises in a manifesto. They are enforced in code, they have tests, and any one of them breaking stops a release.
And if you want to keep working on it
The first answer is not the end of it. Every plate arrives with options already written and checked, so swapping a part is instant; beyond that you can just say what you want and the whole thing is rebuilt around it. Every version is kept and named by what changed, so going back to the one you preferred never destroys anything. There is more about that on how refining a plate works.
If you are cooking for other people, the same evening gets harder in a specific way: remembering who cannot eat what. That is handled as a hard constraint rather than a preference — see cooking for a group with allergies. And if you want the reasoning behind which one or two things get added, what actually makes a meal filling sets it out, sources and all.
Questions about deciding what to have
The ones people ask at about half past five.
No. There is no pantry to set up and nothing to keep up to date. You say what you have in one sentence — typed, spoken, or photographed — and that is the whole input. Anything you did not mention is simply not assumed, and if the dinner needs something you do not have, it goes on a short shopping list rather than becoming a problem.
Say that. “I don’t know what to eat” is a complete answer as far as Just Add is concerned — it will hand you an ordinary dinner built from what it knows you like and what you have told it you cannot eat. Deciding is the tiring part of the evening, so it is the part the app is willing to do first and let you change afterwards.
No. A recipe search matches your ingredients against a database and gives you a list to choose between, which leaves the deciding with you. Just Add gives you one dinner — your own food, plus the one or two things that turn it into a meal — with a recipe attached if you want one. You can change any part of it, but you never have to start by picking.
It cannot. Just Add can only ever suggest adding — there is no code path for removing something, shrinking a portion, or swapping your food for a version it prefers. If you say you are having a burger, you are having a burger; the answer is about what goes with it.
You tell it once during a short setup that is mostly tapping food you like. From then on anything you cannot eat is filtered out of the options before an answer is written, and the finished answer is checked again before it reaches you. It is a hard filter, never a preference and never left to the model to remember.
That is the case it is best at, because it is additive by design. An evening with a tin of something and half a loaf is not a failure state here — it is an ordinary input, and the answer is a real dinner plus at most one thing to pick up if you feel like it.
Dinner, sorted in about a second
Out now on iPhone, and free forever for a real daily allowance of meals, every way in and every situation — nobody is ever locked out of working out what to have tonight.