Few of us spend a lot of time prepping our meals.
This lack of care is usually due to a busy schedule or a low budget. But just because you're hunting around the house or asking yourself "what can I make with what's in my fridge?" doesn't mean that your meals have to be unappetizing.
Here's a list of the best websites with simple recipes for the food you have in your fridge.
1. MyFridgeFood
MyFridgeFood is a recipe-based search engine. It presents you with two options---Quick Kitchen and Detailed Kitchen---when you open the website. You can access Detailed Kitchen by clicking on the button Show All Ingredients.
Both pages have checkboxes representing various food items. To find a recipe, click on the boxes for the foodstuff that you have on hand. It'll then show you a list of meals that you can make with some or all your supplies.
If you sign up to myfridgefood.com, you can submit a recipe, too.
2. Recipe Puppy
Recipe Puppy is another ingredient-based search engine that helps you answer the question "what to make with what I have." It does this by allowing you to hunt for simple recipes with the foodstuff lying around the house.
Recipe Puppy's search function is similar to myfridgefood.com recipes. The search engine is part of the overarching "Recipe Labs" website, where you can create recipes to post for others or hunt for coupons.
This search engine is a great tool for anyone who needs to make a meal with a particular dietary requirement, as you can include or exclude ingredients that may conflict with your allergies.
If you're looking for other food websites that allow you to use up the ingredients around your home, check out our list of recipe websites that show you how to cook with leftovers.
3. Student Recipes
Student Recipes also answers the question "what should I do with my fridge food?" Unlike the other links on this list, it comes with a specific post-secondary focus.
If you've ever been a student, you'll know that you won't have access to a lot of food supplies due to your budget. You also won't have a lot of time to go shopping. Student Recipes aims to fix this with a blog and cooking videos to boot.
The website was originally created by James Bailey, a former student who has admitted to having "very few culinary skills" at the time. One thing we really like about this website is how it breaks down its recipe sections, not only by prep time and type but by content.
You can sort recipes by vegetarian, pork, beef, and fish. There's also a section specifically devoted to parties.
4. Budget Bytes
Budget Bytes is a big website entirely devoted to cheap, easy recipes that don't empty your wallet. It also focuses on meals that can be made with the supplies that you find in your home.
Founded in 2009 by the blogger Beth---when she herself was "struggling with student debt"---Budget Bytes operates on the simple concept that "good food doesn't have to be complicated or expensive."
With detailed subsections on the website that are devoted to each type of meal and prep suggestions, Budget Bytes aims to be a mega-shop for all your culinary questions.
5. Good Cheap Eats
Like Budget Bytes, Good Cheap Eats is a website devoted to cheap and easy recipes for people who are trying to budget. It also aims to help those who rely on less-than-healthy premade meals due to time constraints.
Run by the blogger Jessica, Good Cheap Eats has sections on its website where it breaks down the many ways that you can save money on groceries through meal plans, alongside its wealth of in-house recipes.
Through these tools, you can maximize your kitchen and cooking skills to their full potential.
6. Love Food Hate Waste
Love Food Hate Waste is part of a larger website run by the charity WRAP. Its mission? To make sure there is as little food waste as possible.
WRAP wants to raise awareness about the issue of food waste and how it affects the most vulnerable in our population. They don't want to do this without offering solutions on how to fix the problem, so they have a section entirely devoted to making meals.
The goal of these recipes is to cook food from the odds and ends lying around the house. In the recipe section, you can filter by dietary needs, difficulty, and cooking times.
You can also sort the recipes by popularity, the age of the recipe, or the most votes applied to them.
7. Kraft Recipes
How many times have you seen Kraft products in the grocery store? If you're living anywhere in North America, probably a lot.
As one of the most commonly recognized brands when it comes to foodstuff, Kraft offers cheap-to-midrange products ranging from salad dressing to cream cheese. There's a high chance you have one or two of Kraft products lying around your home.
Because of this, Kraft has this entire website devoted to making easy meals with Kraft products as the base. It's a useful repository of ideas if you're wondering what you can make for lunch or dinner with what's in your fridge.
8. Betty Crocker Recipes
Like Kraft, Betty Crocker is another major food company whose products you can find in most stores. The company's items come in a variety of different categories, although it's most well-known for baking.
Because of its ubiquity at the grocery store, Betty Crocker has its own recipe section where you can learn to make cheap and easy meals by using its products. The ease of access to these products means they're perfectly suited for constructing meals from handy ingredients.
9. Love Canned Food
How many of us have canned food lying around the house that we know is good to eat, but we don't know what to make with it? Love Canned Food is a website devoted to recipes for simple meals that you can make from food in tins.
Canned food is often cheaper than fresh food, and keeps for longer, too. Because of this, it's great for people who are working with a budget.
10. Food Combo
Last on the list is Food Combo, another ingredient-based search engine that helps you find recipes for the food that you have nearby.
Food Combo runs on a similar premise to Recipe Puppy and MyFridgeFood. The company's mission statement explains that it wants to "promote cooking at home while making it more efficient, more affordable, and less wasteful."
To use the service, simply type an ingredient into the search bar to find recipes based on that item. Food Combo will then pull up all the recipes that it can find for that ingredient.
From there, you can narrow down your list of recipes by adding or excluding additional ingredients from your search parameters.
Make an Easy Home-Cooked Meal
Now that you've got a list of places to search for recipes, you can get started with some quick and easy plates for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. However, what if you've got a craving for a particular sort of meal? Specifically, dessert?
If you need to satisfy your sweet tooth, here's a list of the best baking recipe websites.