Apps that tell you what to cook with the ingredients you have

Several apps already turn ingredients you have into a dinner idea. SuperCook and Samsung Food do it for free. Mealime, ReciMe, Cooklist, Kitchen Stories, and NYT Cooking add planning, pantry tracking, or guided video for a monthly fee. Here is what each one actually does.

What SuperCook does

SuperCook is a free ingredient-to-recipe lookup. You type or check off what you have, and it searches recipes that match. There is no subscription, no trial to think about, and no community feed. It is a fast, no-frills way to search by ingredient, and it costs nothing to use.

What Samsung Food does

Samsung Food, formerly Whisk, is a free meal planner that imports recipes from around the web, scales them, and builds a shopping list. It has some recipe sharing built in, though how deep that community goes is not something the research could confirm. Like SuperCook, there is no subscription.

What Paprika does

Paprika is a personal recipe manager: you save and organize recipes you already have, plan meals from them, and build grocery lists. It is a one-time purchase of $4.99, not a subscription. It is not built to search by what is in your kitchen; it is built to organize what you already cook.

What Mealime does

Mealime is diet-based meal planning with a grocery list attached. It has a free tier and a paid tier at $5.99 a month for more personalization. It is aimed at people who want a plan handed to them, not people improvising from a half-stocked pantry.

What ReciMe does

ReciMe imports and organizes recipes, similar in spirit to Paprika. It has a free tier, with paid plans at $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year. It is a recipe box, not a "what can I cook right now" tool.

What Cooklist does

Cooklist is the closest of the eight to a pantry app: it tracks what you have, flags things nearing expiry, and suggests recipes from that list. It has a free tier, with paid plans at $5.99 a month or $47.99 a year.

What Kitchen Stories does

Kitchen Stories is video-led, guided cooking: step-by-step video instead of a wall of text. It has a free tier, paid plans around $8.70 a month or $87 a year, and it is the one app on this list with an actual community built around it.

What NYT Cooking does

NYT Cooking is editorial: recipes written and tested by a newsroom, not generated or crowdsourced. It has a free tier and a paid plan at $4.99 a month, and no community features. If you want a trusted human writer behind every recipe, this is that.

What none of them put together

Read across all eight and a pattern shows up. Some search by ingredient, like SuperCook. Some track a pantry, like Cooklist. Some handle diets, like Mealime. Some organize recipes you already have, like Paprika and ReciMe. None of them combine pantry-first photo capture, a pantry that actually persists between cooking sessions, household profiles for who is eating and what they cannot, and dishes pulled from 30 cuisines, in one loop.

That is the gap Shelfcook is built to fill: point your camera at a shelf or the open fridge, confirm what it found, and get dishes from 30 cuisines scaled to your household, with a grocery list for whatever is missing.

Is the market bigger than just these eight?

Yes, and it is worth naming honestly. Photo-based pantry apps exist too: MakeGood does photo recognition of a fridge or pantry into dinner recipes with allergy exclusions and timers, priced as an annual membership with one free "kitchen run" before it, though the exact price is not published. Cooklist and Stockpot both track a pantry with household or sharing angles of their own. None of the research turned up one app that puts pantry-first photo capture, a persistent pantry, household profiles, and a curated set of dishes across 30 cuisines together in a single loop, which is the specific combination Shelfcook is building toward.

A quick side-by-side

• SuperCook: free ingredient search, no trial needed, no community.
• Samsung Food: free planner and recipe importer, no trial needed, some recipe sharing.
• Paprika: $4.99 one-time recipe manager, no subscription.
• Mealime: free tier or $5.99 a month, diet-based planning.
• ReciMe: free tier, or $9.99 a month and $59.99 a year, recipe organizer.
• Cooklist: free tier, or $5.99 a month and $47.99 a year, pantry tracking with expiry alerts.
• Kitchen Stories: free tier, or about $8.70 a month and $87 a year, video-led with a real community.
• NYT Cooking: free tier or $4.99 a month, editorial recipes, no community.

Which one should you actually use?

If you just want a free ingredient search, SuperCook or Samsung Food does the job with no cost and no commitment. If you already have a folder of recipes to organize, look at Paprika or ReciMe. If diets and grocery lists are your main headache, Mealime fits. If you want to track an actual pantry today, Cooklist is the nearest thing that exists right now. If you want photo capture, a persistent pantry, household profiles, and global cuisines together in one place, that combination is what Shelfcook is being built for.

Shelfcook is not in the app stores yet, this is still in development. If that combination sounds like what your kitchen is missing, join the waitlist to hear when it opens.