Tip 2: Reverse-engineer your recipes

Let the food left in the fridge decide what's for dinner

Do you usually start dinner by thinking about what you fancy eating, then choose a recipe and buy all the ingredients for it? If you do, then your tip this week is to flip it! Try using a reverse recipe generator instead.

Start with any fresh ingredients that need eating up. Check your freezer and cupboards for staples too. Make it a priority to make use of the ingredients you’ve already paid for.

Tip 2

Use a reverse recipe finder to decide what’s for dinner.

It will choose recipes that make best use of your fresh ingredients, followed by your freezer and cupboard  staples. You may still have to buy a few bits. But you’ll save money by using food you’ve already paid...and you won’t waste £££ buying a complete list of recipe ingredients from scratch.

Task

1. Choose a day this week to try out the recipe finder tool.
2. Use your kitchen inventory tracker from last week to see the ingredients you’ve got.
3. Plug them into this week’s FREE recipe finder tool for meal ideas that make use of what you have in stock.
4. Let the recipe finder decide what’s for dinner tonight.
5. Enjoy your meal that little bit more knowing it tastes good, it’s reducing your waste AND it’s saving you money.

Tool

Try SuperCook's FREE reverse recipe finder

Keep going!

You’ve made 2 out of 8 of your Food for thought changes. Make all 8 to save up to £83 a month.

Recipe generators

SuperCook

Input ingredients you have for a list of recipes you can make using those foods.

SuperCook

Remy

This UK app tracks what ingredients you’ve got, suggests recipes, and helps guide your shopping to save time, money, and reduce waste.

Remy

Mealia

This app generates a personalised meal plan and shopping list from your preferred supermarket. The plan is optimised for cost, health, and sustainability.

Mealia

How reverse recipe generators can help you save

A 2022 study on food waste reduction tools published in the journal Sustainability found recipe generators can play a key part by:

Reducing food waste

The single biggest way recipe generators save you money is by helping you use food before it spoils. Some people throw away perfectly good food. This is because they forget what they have, or they lack inspiration to use up seemingly random ingredients.

These recipe generators suggest recipes that use those specific ingredients. This helps you make sure the food you’ve already bought and paid for isn’t forgotten at the back of the fridge.

Reducing unnecessary food buying

You may already have some chicken, a half-used onion, and a few tomatoes. A recipe generator can turn those ingredients into a meal instead of sending you to the store for a completely new list of items.

This prevents the extra cost associated with impulse purchases or buying duplicate ingredients.

Encouraging efficient meal planning

Many recipe generators also include a smart shopping list feature. By helping you plan your meals around ingredients you already own, they create a list of only the missing items. This streamlines your shopping trip and keeps you from overbuying.

Spurring creative, budget-friendly cooking

When you're forced to use what you have, you often discover new, delicious recipes you might not have considered otherwise. This mindset encourages you to use up ingredients that might otherwise be overlooked.

Helps you manage a limited budget

For families on a tight budget, recipe generators can be a game-changer. They act as a helpful tool for creating nutritious and affordable meals using inexpensive ingredients already in the pantry.