Recipe websites usually work in one direction.
You find a recipe.
You read the ingredients.
Then you work out what you need to buy.
Real family kitchens often work in completely the opposite direction.
You open the fridge and discover:
three chicken thighs,
half a cauliflower,
two carrots,
some leftover rice,
a slightly sad bunch of coriander,
and half a tub of yoghurt.
Now what?
That is why one of the biggest changes I’ve made in the way I think about food is incredibly simple.
I start with:
What have I got?
Not:
What should I cook?
Start where real life starts
Sometimes I deliberately shop for a particular meal.
Of course I do.
But plenty of meals begin with what is already in the house.
What needs using?
What did I defrost?
What is growing in the garden?
What is leftover from yesterday?
What is sitting in the freezer?
That is the real starting point.
And once you accept that, cooking becomes much more flexible.
Step one: find your useful ingredient
Pick the ingredient that needs to lead.
It might be:
- chicken
- mince
- sausages
- fish
- eggs
- lentils
- leftover rice
- potatoes
- cauliflower
- zucchini
- tomatoes
Don’t solve the whole meal yet.
Just choose your starting point.
Step two: choose a format
Now ask where that ingredient could go.
Chicken?
Maybe pasta, curry, tacos, tray bake, soup or rice bowl.
Mince?
Bolognese, tacos, meatballs, cottage pie, burgers, kofta or fried rice.
Cauliflower?
Curry, tray bake, soup, fritters, pasta or roast it and add it to a grain bowl.
Rice?
Fried rice, rice bowl, curry side, stuffed vegetables or a quick soup.
This step is useful because formats are much easier to remember than hundreds of individual recipes.
Step three: What Could You Add?
Now look around again.
Not for the perfect ingredients.
For useful additions.
Maybe you have peas.
Spinach.
A tin of beans.
A carrot.
An egg.
A handful of herbs.
Cheese.
Yoghurt.
Some leftover roast vegetables.
Add what makes the meal better.
That is very different from assuming you need every ingredient listed in someone else’s recipe.
Step four: think about the next meal
This is where cooking starts becoming easier rather than simply getting dinner onto the table.
Can you make extra rice?
Cook two more potatoes?
Double the sauce?
Roast another tray of vegetables?
Save some chicken before everyone descends on it?
Those little decisions are almost invisible while you’re cooking.
But tomorrow they matter.
Suddenly lunch is half-made.
Or dinner already has a base.
This is Bitsa cooking
I call a lot of this Bitsa.
Bitsa this.
Bitsa that.
It is not about throwing completely incompatible things into a pan and hoping for the best.
It is about understanding that meals can be built from what you have.
That might mean substitutions.
It might mean leftovers.
It might mean one sausage stretched through a pasta dish with vegetables and beans.
It might mean half a roast chicken feeding everyone again the following day.
That is practical cooking.
The internet has enough recipes
I love recipes.
I write recipes.
I’m currently going through my own recipe catalogue and making them easier to actually use.
But I don’t think the answer to food decision fatigue is another 10,000 recipes.
Often the answer is helping someone choose between three sensible options.
That is quite different.
And it is part of why I’m building EAT.
EAT starts with what you’ve got
The What’s for Dinner? tool in EAT works backwards from the traditional recipe search.
You tell it what is in your kitchen.
It helps narrow that down into a few useful meal ideas.
Then, where I have a proper Mrs E recipe for it, you can go straight to the recipe.
That is the goal:
less scrolling,
less food waste,
less standing in front of an open fridge trying to think.
EAT Beta is planned for October 2026
Start with what you’ve got.
Then make the next meal easier than the last one.