Find Recipes Using Ingredients You Already Have On Hand

Perhaps you remember my last fiasco...

This time, I definitely won't be stocking up on all of the possible ingredients that I think I might want to include in a dish... some time... in the near future... before I get tired of cooking again.

In fact, the point of this article is to share a handful of fun websites I found that let you type in the ingredients you already have on hand. After a simple search, you get a complete list of recipes that include the ingredients you entered.

I wrote about one of the sites before (Cooking By Numbers). But I've since found a bunch of others that I like much better. Each is a tad bit different from the rest. Plus, it's good to have some choices... and variety.

My Favorite "Cook From Your Own Ingredients" Websites

I set out with the goal of finding recipes which included these ingredients:

• taco seasoning
• sour cream
• cream cheese

Listed in order of preference

Google Base Recipe Search -- has a database of over 1.3 million recipes. You can include an entire list of ingredients; just put each 2-word ingredient in quotes and include a space between items (not a comma).
It found 62 recipes with the above ingredients.

Cookin' With Google -- This is a customized search engine that is just like the "regular" Google search engine, but this one only searches popular recipe-related sites. Type in your ingredients by putting 2-word ingredients in quotes and include a space between items (not a comma). The only downside is the results are provided in a non-friendly "search engine" kind of way... and that means you often get more lists of recipes rather than landing on an actual recipe. On the good side... you can fine-tune your results by choosing one of the following: vegan, world, atkins, seafood, diabetic, crockpot, weight watchers, gluten-free, low-fat, or vegetarian.
It found 10 recipes with the above ingredients.

Recipe Matcher -- Says it's a crockpot recipe site, but it's more than just that. You can type in the ingredients you've got. It gives you a long list of recipes which include at least ONE of those ingredients. It lists those items you still need to make that particular recipe. It sorts the results by percentage of your ingredients each recipe actually has. You can add recipes to "your favorites" at this site, print out the ingredients you still need, or print the entire recipe.
It found about 50 recipes with the above ingredients. (If you leave the "I have basic ingredients of butter, flour and salt on hand" checked, it finds a LOT more & most are meaningless. For example, it found about 450 recipes with the above ingredients, most of which didn't include all 3 ingredients.)

All Recipes Ingredient Search -- I like how you can "exclude" ingredients. For example, you get a lot of lobster recipes in the results... simply ask it to exclude "lobster" but still include the other ingredients you previously listed, and you've easily narrowed down the results. Or, you could just search for a particular "type" of dish, rather than searching ALL recipes.
It found 13 recipes with the above ingredients.

Cooking By Numbers - very limited list of available ingredients that you much pick & choose from, rather than being able to type in whatever ingredients you personally have on hand. And it seems like the recipe database is relatively small.
Impossible to search using the ingredients listed above.

Campbell's Kitchen - you can pretty much only search by one ingredient at a time. And, of course, you only get Campbell's-related recipes.
Impossible to search using the ingredients listed above.