Photograph the Fridge, Get Dinner

Half a bag of spinach has gone soft against the plastic, and there are four eggs in a box made for six. Some chicken needs eating tonight or never. A jar has an inch of something red at the bottom that nobody can name.

The fridge hums while you stand there with the door open, and your thumb is already moving towards the delivery app.

Nobody has written a recipe for those exact things, but AI will, in about thirty seconds, from a photo. This works on any plan, free or paid, and it's the most useful boring thing AI does. The only skill is telling AI what the photo can't show.

Six o'clock, the photo and the correction

Take one photo of the open fridge and one of the drawer, and one of the cupboard too if you want that used. Turn the labels to face out, then send this.

List everything you can see in these photos, with rough quantities. Mark anything you're not sure about with a question mark. Don't suggest meals yet.

Read the list and fix it, because the AI will get things wrong. It will call the yoghurt cream, miss the thing behind the milk, and count three eggs when there are four.

Tell the AI, and then add what no photo shows. Say who's eating, how long you've got, what you won't eat, and what's been open since when.

Add allergies too, in this chat, every time. Some AI tools have a memory that keeps details between chats. Don't rely on having told that memory once, because this is the one place a forgotten detail matters. The AI also can't see dates or smell anything, so whether the chicken is still fine is your call, made with your nose.

That correction is the whole trick. Skip it and you'll get a lovely recipe for an ingredient you don't have.

Five past, tonight's dinner

Using only what's on the corrected list plus basic cupboard staples (oil, salt, pepper, the spices I named), give me three dinners I could make tonight in under 30 minutes for [who]. Use the things that need eating first. For each, give one line on what it is and roughly how long it takes. No shopping.

Everything rests on the "no shopping" line. Without it, the AI will cheerfully invent a dish that needs fresh basil and a lime.

If one of the three sounds grim, say so and the AI will swap it. Then pick one and ask for the method, written the way you cook, such as "short steps, tell me when to start the rice".

Left to itself, the AI drifts towards mild cooking with garlic in everything. So tell it "we like it spicy" or "my kids won't eat anything green" and the AI adjusts. You're allowed taste.

After dinner, the week and the short shop

Once tonight is sorted, the same chat can do the rest of the week.

Now plan five more dinners for this week, still built mostly around what we've got. For each, list only what I'd need to buy. Then combine those into one shopping list, grouped the way a supermarket is laid out, with rough quantities. Keep it to a budget of about £[x] and tell me if that's unrealistic.

Read the plan before you believe it. Wednesday might be a 90-minute stew on the night you get home at seven, and if so, move it. If the plan has the same chicken three times, tell the AI you'll mutiny.

When you shop

Go and do the shop yourself, or paste the list into whichever supermarket app you use. Some AI tools can now add things to an online basket for you. That's fine if you want it, as long as you check the basket before you pay.

The AI will pick the premium hummus every time.