What Can I Cook With What I Have? A Five-Minute Pantry Method

The 6 pm problem

Most weeknights go the same way. Work ends, someone asks "what are we eating?", and everyone opens the fridge, looks, and closes it again. The food is there. What is missing is a way to see it as a meal.

We built Degchi around this exact moment, so we have thought about it more than is probably healthy. Here is the method we use at home. You can do it with nothing but a pen or the notes app on your phone.

Step 1: Sort what you have into four groups

Forget exact quantities. Just list what is there under four headings:

• Base: rice, flour, bread, pasta, potatoes.
• Protein: lentils, chickpeas, eggs, paneer, chicken, whatever is in the freezer.
• Vegetables: anything fresh, even one sad tomato and half an onion.
• Flavour: onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, cumin, turmeric, garam masala, lemon, yoghurt.

If you cook South Asian food, you almost always have the flavour group covered. That is the quiet advantage of this cuisine: a handful of spices turns very little into a lot.

Step 2: Pick a dish shape, not a recipe

Recipes are strict. Shapes are forgiving. A few shapes cover most desi weeknights:

1. Daal shape: lentils plus a tarka (hot oil with cumin, garlic and chilli poured over at the end). Works with red lentils (masoor), yellow split peas (chana daal), mung, or a mix. Our daal recipe is a good starting point.
2. Khichdi shape: rice and lentils cooked together, roughly 1 cup (200 g) of each for four people with about 5 cups (1.2 litres) of water. It is the ultimate "I have almost nothing" meal. See our khichdi recipe.
3. Sabzi shape: any vegetable, onion, tomato, spices, lid on. Potato and cauliflower become aloo gobi. Potato and spinach become aloo palak. The method barely changes.
4. Egg shape: eggs rescue everything. Scrambled with onion and chilli (bhurji), curried, or tossed through leftover rice like egg fried rice.

You are not looking for the perfect dish. You are looking for the one that matches what you have.

Step 3: Check what is missing, then decide

Compare the dish you picked with your list. Sort the gaps into two kinds:

• Essential gaps: the dish does not work without it (no lentils, no rice).
• Optional gaps: it will be nicer with it, but fine without (coriander, a squeeze of lemon).

No essential gaps means you are cooking. One gap means asking whether a sibling dish fits better. Two or more means that dish goes on the weekend shopping list.

A worked example

You open the fridge and find half a cauliflower, two potatoes, an onion, a tomato and yoghurt, plus rice in the cupboard.

• Base: rice, potatoes. Protein: yoghurt only. Vegetables: cauliflower, onion, tomato.
• Shape: sabzi. Dish: aloo gobi with plain rice and a bowl of yoghurt with salt and cumin.
• Essential gaps: none. Optional: fresh coriander. Skip it.

That took about two minutes. Cooking takes roughly 35 minutes, and nobody ordered takeaway.

Keep a small "always have" list

The method works best when your kitchen has a few forgiving staples. Ours are:

• Rice (basmati, 2 lb or about 1 kg at a time)
• Two kinds of lentils, one quick-cooking like red lentils
• Onions, garlic, ginger
• Eggs
• Canned tomatoes or tomato paste
• Oil or ghee, salt, turmeric, red chilli, cumin, coriander powder, garam masala
• A bag of frozen peas or mixed vegetables

None of it is expensive, and with these in the house you can nearly always make something decent.

Where an app helps, and where it does not

Doing this in your head every night is tiring, which is the honest reason we made Degchi. You mark each pantry item as Have, Low or Out, and the app shows which dishes you can cook right now and which are one item short. It also builds the shopping list from what is running low. It works offline and it is free.

You do not need it for the method above. Try the four groups and the dish shapes for a week first. If you find yourself wishing the matching happened automatically, we would love you to join the Degchi beta.

Quick recap

1. Sort what you have: base, protein, vegetables, flavour.
2. Choose a dish shape, not an exact recipe.
3. Separate essential gaps from optional ones.
4. Keep a short list of forgiving staples at home.

Next time you stand at the open fridge, you will already know what to do.