The weekly food shop often starts with good intentions.
Next time you’ll be more organised. You’ll stop scribbling lists on scraps of paper. You might even buy the ingredients for that recipe you saved three months ago. But by Tuesday you’re back to the usual rotation: spag bol, the speedy chicken curry and the tray bake everyone tolerates. Same meals, just shuffled around the week. Similar shopping list, with a mild sense of defeat.
But it turns out that AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can ease this repetitive meal planning cycle. They can’t do the actual cooking (yet), but they’re great for inspiration and the tedious bits: writing lists, suggesting variations and working out what to do with random ingredients in the fridge.
Here are five ways AI could take the chore out of your family meal planning.
1. Streamline your weekly shopping list
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First, open a new chat and list your weekly staples – all of them, even the boring ones you buy every week. For example: “Our basics: milk, bread, eggs, greek yoghurt, chicken breasts, tinned tomatoes, lettuce, onions, potatoes...”.
Then add your regular recipes. Paste links if they're online, photograph pages if they're written down in books or just list the main ingredients. Your chatbot of choice – whether it’s Gemini, ChatGPT or Copilot – can read all of these. Rename your chat ‘shopping list’. The AI remembers everything in your chat, so next week you simply type: “This week we're making bolognese Monday, honey soy chicken Tuesday, fish pie Wednesday. Create a shopping list for what we need beyond our basics.”
You don’t need a paid subscription for this. The free versions all work well. If you hit message limits on one chat, just try another – or keep your ‘staples’ list in a note on your phone so you can easily paste it into a fresh chat.
2. Refresh your tired favourites
We were bored of our usual chicken tray bake, so rather than hunting for a whole new recipe, we asked AI to fix the old one. We typed: “We often cook this tray bake (list ingredients). It’s become predictable and, frankly, it’s a bit dry. Suggest small tweaks that keep it simple but make it taste different.”
Our chatbot suggested adding a splash of stock and covering it with foil for the first 20 minutes (to fix the dryness), switching the spice blend to smoked paprika and serving it with couscous instead of potatoes. Same dish, different dinner. Try this with whatever you’re tired of making for an upgrade on an old favourite.
3. Rescue dinner at the last minute
Some of the most useful meal suggestions from AI come from the nights when the fridge looks bare. Let’s say it's 6pm. You're shattered. Dinner needs to happen, but your fridge has just a few random ingredients. Open a new chat and list what you have – or even quicker, just snap a photo of the open fridge and upload it.
Ask: “I've got (list items/this photo). What can I make for four people in 30 minutes? Assume I have standard store cupboard spices and oils, but nothing fancy.” Back comes a handful of options. Give them a quick sense-check though.
Chatbots sometimes think you can make risotto in minutes, or that you have saffron lurking in the cupboard. But it certainly beats staring into the fridge hoping for inspiration. ChatGPT recently suggested a rustic soup using a forgotten tin of cannellini beans and some tired celery. About 30 minutes from start to finish – and considerably better than toast.
4. Cater for fussy eaters
If your eight-year-old treats vegetables as a personal attack, AI can help you work around it. Try: “My daughter refuses anything green but loves pasta. Give me three pasta recipes where vegetables are completely invisible.”
Suggestions may include puréeing butternut squash into a “cheese” sauce and hidden courgette and lentil bolognese. Perhaps not revolutionary for most parents, but instant solutions are always helpful when you’re cooking for children. Or try: “Dinner for six: one vegan, one gluten-free, two children who think pepper is spicy. What can I make that won't mean cooking four different meals?”
When I tried this, it came back with a build-your-own solution, such as taco bars or rice bowls, where everyone assembles their own plate and you only cook once.
5. Swap out expensive ingredients
Food costs are high and December never helps matters – it's worth finding cheaper swaps for your favourite meals that actually work rather than derail dinner.
Try: “I'm making pasta and we usually have parmesan cheese, but it’s expensive now. What's a cheaper swap that has a similar flavour?”
When I tried this, the chatbot suggested Grana Padano, aged for less time and significantly cheaper but tastes great. I might even prefer it. These kinds of swaps add up faster than you might think, and the savings are welcome over the festive period. I’m now saving mental energy for the actual chaos: Christmas dinner planning. Three vegetables, a turkey, and managing everyone’s expectations. No amount of AI can make that less stressful, though I might just ask it to arrange the seating plan.
Harriet Meyer has spent more than 20 years writing about personal finance before becoming somewhat obsessed with artificial intelligence.
Illustration by Charlotte Durance