Last updated: 2026-11-02

What to Cook with What You Have: Search by Ingredient

The question behind "what can I cook with what I have" is rarely philosophical. Something in the fridge is on its way out, dinner is already late, and the usual move is to open a recipe site, search the ingredient, and adapt a stranger's recipe to the rest of what's in the kitchen. If you keep a recipe library, there's a faster move: search your own. Type the ingredient into momoChef's search box and the recipes you've saved that use it come back.

Recipes from your library are ones you chose to keep. You've probably cooked some of them, you know how they turned out, and the ingredient list is the one you trusted when you saved it. This guide is the fridge-first way to answer what to cook with what you have: pick the ingredient that expires first, search it, and cook one of the results.

Start with what expires first

Every fridge has one ingredient asking the question before you do — the wilting spinach, the buttermilk left from a weekend bake, the chicken that hits its date tomorrow. That ingredient picks the search for you. Searching is a way of asking your library a direct question: which of the recipes I kept can take this?

A search box on a recipe site returns anything anyone has published with that ingredient. A search in your library returns only recipes you imported on purpose — every result is one you considered worth keeping, from someone whose cooking you already wanted to copy.

Search looks at ingredients, not just titles

There's no separate ingredient mode to turn on — the regular search box does it. Type an ingredient you want to cook with, and the search checks the ingredient list of every recipe in your library, not just the title line. A search for zucchini can surface a fritter recipe you saved in March whose title never says zucchini — the ingredient list is what matched.

Three things worth knowing about how it ranks and matches:

Ingredient matches rank below title matches. A recipe with the ingredient in its title sorts above one that merely uses it, and description and tag matches land in between. If the first few results all have the word in the title, keep scanning — the recipe that quietly uses the ingredient is usually somewhere below.
Close misspellings usually still match. Search forgives typos like "zuchini" more often than not. If a search that should hit comes back empty anyway, check the spelling before writing off the ingredient.
Ingredient notes count too. A recipe whose ingredient entry says "rotisserie chicken" turns up when you search it, which is how the leftovers recipes surface when you need them.

You can type more than one ingredient, but you're then searching for the words together: "chicken rice" matches recipes where the phrase appears — a title like one-pot chicken rice, or an ingredient note — not every recipe containing both separately. Near-matches can turn up as well. The reliable method is one anchor at a time: search the ingredient that expires first and check the results for the second thing you have.

What to cook with what you have, step by step

Name the anchor. Open the fridge and pick the ingredient that expires first. Not the most interesting one — usually the most perishable one. That's the constraint dinner has to satisfy.
Search it. Type just the ingredient — "spinach", not "recipes with spinach". Search matches the ingredient lists of your whole library, so a plain noun is all it needs.
Scan past the title hits. The recipes you want may not be at the top; title matches sort first. Read the ingredient line of anything promising and check it against the second and third thing you have. This is the two-ingredient check, done by eye.
Cover the gaps. The winner needs half a lemon and you're out — swap in what's in the door, or put lemons on this week's shopping list.
Cook it in cooking mode. Phone propped by the stove, and momoChef's hands-free cooking mode keeps the timers running even with the screen off.
Mark it made-and-loved if it earns it. A recipe that solves an ingredient problem once will solve it again. Favorite it and it joins your made-and-loved list, so next time you can start from proven dinners instead of a full results list.

What to type: examples

You're staring at	Type this	What comes back
Wilting spinach	`spinach`	Saved recipes that use spinach, from frittatas to curries
Leftover rotisserie chicken	`chicken`	Soups, tacos, and salads — scan for the ones that use cooked chicken
Buttermilk from a weekend bake	`buttermilk`	Saved pancakes, dressings, and marinades that call for buttermilk
Ground turkey that was on special	`ground turkey`	Recipes that start from ground turkey
Half a bunch of cilantro	`cilantro`	Salsas, toppings, and the mains that finish with it
"I have chicken and rice"	`chicken`	Scan the ingredient lists for rice — "chicken rice" matches the phrase, not both ingredients

The last row is most nights: search the anchor, then scan the ingredient lists of the promising results for the second thing.

First, give search something to find

Ingredient search is only as good as the library it runs against. A library with twelve recipes returns twelve answers at best; a library with the recipes you cook on repeat returns dinner. Everything you've been meaning to make — the recipe open in a tab, the video you saved last week, the card from your grandmother — can go in: momoChef imports from any recipe URL, a TikTok or Instagram post, a photo of a recipe, or typed text, and parses each one into ingredients, steps, timings, and nutrition.

If the library has grown past a screenful, a few minutes spent putting recipes into books pays off later — books are for browsing and showing, and search makes sure filing never decides what you find. The organize-your-recipes guide covers the books.

When search comes up empty

Some searches come back with nothing. Check the spelling first — search forgives typos, not different words. If the spelling was fine, the usual reading is right: no recipe you've kept uses this ingredient. Two moves fix that:

Import one recipe that uses it. Search the open web for the ingredient, pick a recipe that looks right, and import it from its link — the next search for the ingredient will find it.
Plan the ingredient in instead. Pick a recipe that uses it — import one if none fits — give it a night on the weekly meal planner, and the grocery list for that stretch of dates includes it.

Either way, the ingredient gets cooked instead of tossed.

FAQ

Can I search multiple ingredients at once? You can type more than one, but that searches for the words together — "chicken rice" matches the phrase, not every recipe containing both. Search the ingredient that expires first, then check the results' ingredient lists for whatever else you have.

Does search also look at descriptions and tags? Yes. Titles, descriptions, tags, and ingredient names and notes all match, with titles ranking highest. For the fridge-first method, the ingredient matching is the part doing the work.

Does this work on iPhone and on the web? Both. momoChef is an iOS app and a web app, and you can search your library in either. On iPhone, saved recipes are available offline and sync when you're back online.

What if my library is basically empty? Import five recipes you cook — from their web pages, the posts where you saw them, or typed in — and tonight's search has something to find. The recipe clipper browser extension makes the web-page case a one-click job.

Is this the same as the AI Cooking Assistant? No. The AI Cooking Assistant is a separate Premium feature. Ingredient search is core: it finds what's in your library and shows it to you.

Start small: open your library and search for the oldest vegetable in your crisper. If recipes come back, cook one tonight. If nothing does, check the spelling once, then import one recipe that uses it — the next search for that ingredient finds it. momoChef is free to start and works in the web app or the iOS app.