Lesson 286 · 2 min

Cook from what's in the fridge

Snap a photo of your fridge and AI can suggest dinners from what you already have.

It is 6pm, the market is closed, and the fridge holds half a cabbage, three eggs, some pork and a bit of tofu. Instead of ordering in, ask a chatbot what you can make.

Many chatbots can look at a photo and name the food in it. Check its list, because it may mistake one green leaf for another, then add what is in your cupboard: rice, fish sauce, garlic, noodles.

Tell it what you want: quick, one pan, no chilli for the kids, Vietnamese home style. You will get a few ideas with simple steps. Ask for something simpler if a recipe looks too fussy.

Use your own nose and eyes for freshness. AI cannot tell from a photo whether the pork is still good.

Do it now

Tonight's dinner from the fridge

  1. 1. Take a photo of the open fridge, or list what is inside.
  2. 2. Send it with the prompt below.
  3. 3. Pick one idea and ask for step-by-step instructions.
Here is what is in my fridge [photo or list]. I also have rice, fish sauce, garlic, oil and noodles. Suggest 3 Vietnamese home-style dinners for 4 people that take under 30 minutes and use only these things. First list the ingredients you can see so I can correct you.

Quick check

Why ask AI to list the ingredients it sees before suggesting recipes?

Why ask AI to list the ingredients it sees before suggesting recipes?

More on this

Words from this lesson

Multimodal
Able to work with more than one kind of input or output, such as text, images, sound and video together.
Prompt
The instruction or question you give an AI. Clearer prompts with context usually get much better answers.