Recipe finder app

Find recipes by the ingredients you already have.

Type in what you've got — or keep a pantry Pantry Pal already knows — and it tells you what you can make with those ingredients tonight. It looks at the recipes you brought it first: cookbooks, NYT, the blog you bookmarked at 1am. When nothing you've saved fits the shelf, AI writes you three Recipe Ideas from what's actually on it. Runs in your browser — nothing to install.

Free to start. No ads. No credit card.

Pantry Pal's recipes on a phone, sorted by what's on your shelf: a Lemon Risotto with Peas card badged 'All in pantry' and 'In 1 list', tagged Vegetarian and Weeknight, 40 min, from your own recipes — and under it the next recipe, badged 'Need 1' with an 'Add to list' button.
Everything for this one. The next is one short.
In one lineWhat this is

A recipe app for what you have — not what some database thinks you should make. It works backwards from your kitchen: it keeps the recipes you already cook from — books, sites, photographed pages — and matches them against what's actually on your shelf, so dinner is a choice you make from the food you already own.

The recipe-app problemPlenty of recipes, no dinner

You have plenty of recipes. You just can't cook any of them right now.

Open any recipe app and you get a stock database — thousands of dishes you didn't choose, by people you've never met, calling for ingredients that aren't in your kitchen. It's a catalogue, not an answer. You wanted dinner; you got homework.

Even a recipe finder by ingredient is working from a stranger's pantry, not yours — meanwhile the recipes you actually trust live somewhere else entirely: a shelf of cookbooks, a folder of screenshots, the blog post you swore you'd remember. They're yours, they're good, and they're completely disconnected from the one fact that matters at 6pm — what's on your shelf tonight.

The gap was never a shortage of recipes. It's that no app holds your recipes and your pantry in the same hand. Close that gap and dinner stops being a search and starts being a short list.

What it doesYour recipes, made cookable

A recipe app that starts with the food you already own

01 Bring your own recipes

Every recipe you trust, in one place.

Paste a link. Paste a TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube video and it listens and reads. Photograph a cookbook page, upload an EPUB or a PDF, or type it in. The recipes you already cook from — wherever they live now — become a library Pantry Pal can actually reason about.

02 Matched to your real shelf

Cross-referenced against your pantry.

Pantry Pal checks each recipe against the pantry inventory you already gave it — is this on your shelf, not is this probably in most kitchens. Keep the shelf honest and the answer stays honest.

03 Ready right now

What's ready, and what's one thing short.

You don't get a wall of maybes. You get the recipes you can make right now — badged “All in pantry” — and the near-misses, badged “Need 1”, that you're a single ingredient away from. Decide in seconds. Here's a closer look at what you can make with what you have.

04 Your sources, kept whole

The book, the page, the blog — intact.

Pantry Pal never swaps your recipe for a generic version. It keeps the source it came from — "Six Seasons, p.214" — so you can flip to the real thing whenever you want the headnote, the photo, the marginalia.

Getting recipes inSix ways, no retyping

However you keep your recipes, they come straight in.

Paste a URL. Paste a TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube video link and Pantry Pal listens to it and reads the caption. Photograph a page from a real cookbook, drop in an EPUB or a PDF, or type it by hand. It reads the ingredients whichever way the recipe turns up — then checks them against your shelf. Six real ways in — EPUB and PDF share the one upload button, so that's six sources behind five buttons. The screen has a sixth tile, at the top, that isn't an import at all: it's Recipe Ideas, for the night nothing you've saved fits. No app-store download required.

Works right in your browser, on the phone already on your counter.

Pantry Pal's add-a-recipe screen on a phone, headed “Where's it coming from?”, offering Generate a recipe, Paste a URL from any recipe site, Video — paste a TikTok, Instagram or YouTube link, Photos of a cookbook page it reads with OCR, Upload a file for an EPUB, PDF or screenshot, and Type it in.
Five buttons bring a recipe in. The one at the top writes you one.
How it worksRecipes to dinner

From a shelf of recipes to tonight's dinner in three steps

1

Bring your recipes.

Paste a link. Paste a video — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Photograph a page, upload an EPUB or a PDF, or type one in. The recipes you trust become a library, not a pile.

2

Point it at your pantry.

Tell Pantry Pal what's on your shelf — or let your pantry inventory keep it current. It checks every recipe against what you actually have, so you use up what you have before it's forgotten.

3

Cook what's ready.

Open it hungry. It shows what you can make right now, and what you're one ingredient short on — straight from your own recipes.

When nothing fitsRecipe Ideas from your shelf

When nothing you've saved fits the shelf.

Every other way into your library starts somewhere else — a site, a book, a video — and works back towards your kitchen. This one starts in it. Your saved recipes get matched first, always; Ideas are for the night when none of them want anything to do with half a cabbage, a tin of chickpeas, and some rice. So you cook, instead of shopping.

Point it at your whole pantry, at a few things you pick, or at the one thing that has to go tonight — the coriander going limp, the half tub of ricotta. You get 3 Recipe Ideas back, built from exactly what you pointed at.

They're checked, not just written. Your household's allergies and the way you eat get re-applied to every Idea after it's written, and again after every refinement — anything that breaks them is dropped, and you're told what got dropped. Every Idea still carries the line “AI-generated — use your judgment”, because it was.

Don't like what came back? Say what to change — no oven, less faff, make it lunch — and it reworks them, up to 10 turns in one sitting. Refining never costs you another Idea. And it stays an Idea until you save it: your cookbook only ever holds the recipes you chose.

Working from the whole pantry needs at least 3 things on your shelf — under that it says so rather than guessing. The free plan covers 5 Recipe Ideas a month; Pro is unlimited.

Pantry Pal's 'Cook tonight' screen on a phone: an Italian Recipe Idea, Skillet mozzarella and tomato rice, 35 min total for 4 servings, marked 'You have everything' and badged 'You have it all', with a 'Save to recipes' button, a footnote reading 'AI-generated — use your judgment', and a Mediterranean Idea for wilted spinach and yogurt flatbreads beneath it.
Nothing you'd saved fits. These do — until you save one, they stay Ideas.
FAQ

Cook from your own recipes.

Yours. Pantry Pal isn't a stock recipe database like SuperCook or the big recipe sites — it's a recipe app for what you have, built around the recipes you bring it. Cookbooks, NYT, the blog you bookmarked, the card in your mum's handwriting. It keeps each one with its original source and matches it against your pantry, so it works as a recipe app by the ingredients you have on hand — the answer to "what can I make?" is always drawn from food and recipes you already chose.
Six ways, and you'll use most of them eventually. Paste a URL from any recipe site. Paste a TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube link and Pantry Pal listens to it and reads the caption and the creator's pinned comment, then hands you the recipe as text. Photograph a cookbook page and it reads the ingredients — or upload an EPUB cookbook and it pulls the recipes out chapter by chapter, or a PDF and it reads it page by page. And you can always type one in by hand, for the card in your mum's handwriting. (EPUB and PDF share the one upload button, so that's six sources behind five buttons.) No retyping a book you already own.
No. Start with the staples you know you have and the matching gets useful immediately. The more of your shelf Pantry Pal knows, the sharper the "what can I make with these ingredients?" answer gets — and the more you use up what you have before it goes off. Your pantry is saved, so the matching starts from what you told it last time rather than a blank search bar. Keep it honest and the matches stay honest with it. You can grow it one grocery run at a time.
It's built from your shelf, and then checked. Your saved recipes are always matched first — Ideas are what you get when nothing you've saved fits what's actually there, so you cook instead of shopping. Every Idea comes back built from the pantry items you pointed at, and your household's allergies and the way you eat are re-applied to each one after it's written, and again after every refinement. Anything that breaks them is dropped, and you're told what got dropped. Then it stays an Idea — nothing joins your cookbook until you save it.
Yes — genuinely free, no ads and no credit card, right in your browser. New accounts get a 30-day trial with 50 recipe imports a month; after that, the free plan keeps your saved recipes and gives you 5 new imports and 5 Recipe Ideas a month. Pro makes both unlimited and adds meal planning, hands-free cook mode, and unlimited grocery lists. No nag screens.
Your recipes, finally cookable

Dinner is already in your kitchen.

Bring the recipes you love and the pantry you have. Pantry Pal does the matching — and hands you tonight's short list.

Try it free

Free to start. No ads. No credit card.