'What can I cook with only what's already in my fridge?'
“Every recipe app wants me to go buy 6 ingredients. I want the opposite — I have chicken, half an onion, and rice, what can I make RIGHT NOW without shopping?”— r/Cooking ↗
Recipe apps are shopping-list-first — they assume you'll buy what's missing. The 'use only what I have, zero shopping' framing is the opposite intent and barely served; it doubles as a food-waste reducer.
Anyone trying to cook without a grocery run (and cut food waste)
Build 'Cook What I Have' in Next.js. User types/checks the ingredients they already own; an LLM (Vercel AI SDK, structured output) returns 3 recipes that use ONLY those items (plus assumed pantry staples like salt/oil), ranked by how few extra things are needed. First 3 steps: (1) an ingredient input with quick-add chips for common items, (2) a server action that prompts the model for `{recipes: [{title, ingredientsUsed, steps, missing}]}`, (3) a results view sorted by fewest `missing` items. No accounts.