Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

This recipe finder will give you dinner ideas using what’s in your fridge

Tired of food waste? This site will tell you what to make for dinner using leftover ingredients

By

We’ve all been there. It’s 6:30, you’ve just gotten home from work, and you stand in front of an open refrigerator, clueless and frustrated. You have no idea what to do with the random ingredients staring back at you. You’ve been using that beautiful brain all day long and now you have to put on an apron and come up with dinner ideas for you and your family? No thanks.

If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, there’s now a site for that very problem. It’s called Gumbo, and it’s a total game-changer. Gumbo takes what you already have in your fridge, and generates tons of recipes using exactly those ingredients. No need for a last-minute trip to the grocery store.

man looking in fridge
Maskot / Adobe Stock

Let’s say you open your fridge and see, for example, raw chicken breast, oranges, soy sauce, honey, and green onions. Simply open the Gumbo app and select those items. With one click, dozens of recipes will pop up that feature those ingredients – Healthy Orange Chicken, Zesty Instant Pot Chicken Breasts, Whole Lemon and Honey Chicken Skewers — to name just a few.

Recommended Videos

No matter how random your assortment of refrigerator finds, Gumbo has a recipe for you. It also can offer recipes that only require one or two additional (yet common) ingredients. Let’s say you don’t include salt in your search. Chances are, you probably have salt at home. So, if there are recipes that call for everything you selected plus salt, Gumbo will offer that up as an option.

Related

In addition to taking the burden of recipe creation off your plate, Gumbo will also save you money by keeping your food waste in check. A 2020 study from the American Journal of Agricultural Economics found that the average household in the United States wastes 31.9% of its food, or about $1,866 annually. That’s an absolutely shocking statistic. But by knowing exactly what to do with the seemingly useless items in our fridge, Gumbo can greatly help cut back on such an enormously wasteful problem.

News of the new app has been spreading over Reddit like wildfire, and people are ecstatic, exclaiming, “Ok this is amazing! I have DREAMT of a site like this and am excited to give it a go! Here’s to (hopefully) less food waste!” and “This is freaking amazing! Thank you!!!”

Users of Reddit, we couldn’t agree more.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lindsay Parrill
Lindsay Parrill
Contributor
Lindsay is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Le Cordon Bleu, San Francisco, from where she holds a degree in…
The 8 best hot dog topping alternatives you need to try
Forget the mustard and sauerkraut, try these creative toppings instead
Three hot dogs with different topppings

Summer will be here before we know it, so that means grilling season has almost arrived. Whether you have backyard barbecues, like to picnic at the barbecue pit in the park, or just want to harken back to your youth with hot dogs, why not get creative with some alternative hot dog toppings?
Our best alternative toppings for your dogs
You can prepare your hot dogs by steaming, boiling, or grilling, but that doesn’t mean the toppings have to be mustard only -- and no, we don’t put ketchup on hot dogs. We’re going to take a look at some of the most creative hot dog toppings out there that are sure to up your hot dog game.
Classic Chicago dogs

These hot dog toppings always will be a staple. The Vienna Beef hot dog reached Chicago during the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and the Chicago Dog was invented in 1929 at a stand named Fluky’s. The hot dog was originally called the Depression Sandwich. The Chicago-style dog features a poppy seed bun with an all-beef frank topped with mustard, white onions, dark green sweet pickle relish, sliced tomato, sport peppers, a dill pickle spear, and celery salt. If you don’t have the celery salt, that is passable, but you definitely can’t have a Chicago dog without the remaining ingredients.
New York dogs

Read more
Upgrade your next barbecue with elk, the healthy red meat you should be eating
First Light Farms is raising high-quality pasture-raised elk deliverable to your front door.
cooked elk with cup

First Light Farms elk backstrap. Marilynne Bell / First Light Farms

If you're looking for a red meat alternative to beef that's delicious and packed with nutrients like Omega-3 fatty acids, protein-packed elk might be the answer. A great place to get pasture-raised elk delivered is First Light Farms. This New Zealand-based company raises 100% grass-fed wagyu, venison, and, most recently, elk, all deliverable to your front door. First Light Farms sent us several of their items to try, and we interviewed them to learn all about this must-try red meat.

Read more
The 11 best grill and smoker recipes to make now
Tasty recipes to cook on your gas, charcoal, or pellet grill
Ducks in the Pig Pen

It's that time of year again when we neglect our Dutch ovens, slow cookers, and air fryers for our outdoor char-grilling and smoking devices. It doesn't matter if you're cooking with gas, charcoal, or pellets. The main is you're outside enjoying the nice weather with a a cold beer.

While everyone loves a tasty burger or hot dog, they can get boring after a while. Sometimes, we want to flex our culinary muscles at our grills and for anyone else who may be just hanging around us for the cold beer.

Read more