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We’ve all been there – standing in front of the open fridge, wondering what the heck to make with all those leftovers or “I haven’t gone to the store in a week” ingredients.
Yep, that’s me most nights of the week. Life gets busy, and while I typically love cooking, end-of-the-day fatigue usually sets in, and all I want to do is not have to decide on what to make. Luckily, a clever workaround lets someone or something else decide for me: ChatGPT.
Taking Pictures as Inspiration
Using a friend’s advice and the idea of using AI as a recipe generator, I decided to take a picture of my fridge and feed that into ChatGPT using the new image upload and analyze option. It takes everything that it sees I have on hand, plugs it into its internal algorithms, and spits out a series of recipes that it thinks I can accomplish with my fridge contents.
Luckily, the process itself is simple. You open your fridge or pantry and take a picture of what you have on hand. Try to make sure that specific ingredients or items can be seen, so if you can’t see all the veggies in your drawer, you might want to open it up to get a better picture. Then upload that onto ChatGPT and let it do its “magic.”
The Good and the Ugly of ChatGPT’s Meal Ideas
The results were interesting, to say the least. I will say that inputting the pictures alone came up with the craziest ideas, but adding a few descriptions of what else I had on hand, such as frozen beef and spices, helped narrow down and refine the recipes.
Some of ChatGPT’s better ideas included a great-looking cheeseburger tater tot casserole (complete with a homemade cheese sauce), sausage and egg breakfast burritos, and cheeseburger mac and cheese.
Hilariously, each of the above recipes used cheese slices, which ChatGPT could spot in the bottom drawer of my fridge, as well as milk, butter, and ketchup. So, it is obviously pulling from the more prominent and common ingredients in the images.
On the other hand, there were some really… weird recipes, too. Recipes that obviously came from something that had never really cooked which, what can you expect from an AI algorithm? These recipes included sausage and cheese pizza toast, in which I was meant to spread tomato sauce or ketchup on toast and top with cheese slices (again) and sausage, as well as beef tacos with cheese and pickles.
Yes, you read that right. Beef tacos. With pickles. This recipe would have had me browning ground beef with taco seasoning, warming up either tortillas or bread and creating tacos… out of bread. Complete with chopped pickles and a drizzle of mustard or ketchup and chopped pickles. Now, I don’t know about you, but tacos, mustard, and pickles don’t really make sense to me.
ChatGPT Recipe Winner
Luckily, ChatGPT really did come through with one major win in the form of a cheesy hamburger and potato soup, and that was the one that I decided to run with. It took inspiration from my fridge and pantry and the little bit of direction I added in to come up with a surprisingly good recipe using what I had on hand, namely a few leftover potatoes that hadn’t yet been turned into French fries, a pound of hamburger meat, and some other veggies.
This meal, made from pretty much what I had on hand, would not have been something I came up with on my own. Nor would I have searched for it outright, but I have to admit, it turned out really good. I followed the recipe as stated and ended up with a delicious soup that the entire family loved.
Using ChatGPT To Plan Meals Is Entertaining
In my opinion, ChatGPT is a fun, easy way to come up with something quick and simple to make with ingredients straight from your fridge or pantry, especially if your biggest hang-up is deciding on “something” rather than picking something more gourmet. I suggest supplementing the images you put into it with some extra notes on things you might have on hand that it hasn’t seen, such as adding what kinds of protein or spices you have.
Also, make sure to add in what you don’t want to use. ChatGPT can now reason, but you still have to help guide it with your own preferences. Case in point: I like cheese slices, but not when they are in every recipe! Or, if you don’t want to combine taco seasoning with pickles, you can also avoid that.
My biggest issue is that ChatGPT isn’t very intuitive. It comes up with basic ideas that you will need to expand upon and refine, so if you don’t have the time to do so, you might be better off just randomizing your meal or going with something you are already familiar with. Still, if you have the time, it doesn’t hurt to try and come up with something new and unique. The recipes are usually easy to follow, and you can easily mix, match, and refine them to come up with something worth trying!