Fabulous tool to help reduce food waste!

Filed in Blog by on July 28, 2009 7 Comments
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Rich winter tomato soup; I can make it now thanks to Supercook!

Rich winter tomato soup; I can make it now thanks to Supercook!

My delectable friend Sarah, who just happens to be a seamstress extrodinaire, shared an exciting website with me this week.

It will help you reduce food waste and find inspiration for all that stuff sitting in your ‘fridge and cupboards.

How many times, when faced with a bit of this, a slice of that or half a tin of  t’other have thought you have nothing to eat? Or are left stumped for creative inspiration?

Well worry no more!

Over on the Supercook site, you can enter all the sad looking ingredients you have in your home and you’ll be rewarded with a stonkingly long list of recipes.

Ok, I’ve seen these sites before and they’ve been crap, but this one really works.

It’s simple to use and has some really useful features.

It will say ‘Do you have..’ and list things like Olive oil, milk, seasoning etc to prompt you about the simple store cupboard standbys you might have forgotten about

All you do is type in the ingredients you want to use. I just typed in a random list to see what would come up:

  • chicken
  • bell pepper
  • onion
  • yogurt
  • garlic
  • tomato
  • butter

As I am typing them in, a list of recipes is coming up on the other side of the screen with either a ‘You have everything needed for this recipe’ or a ‘You will also need … (and it will say what you need such as bread or vinegar or rice).

You can see immediately that you have, in this instance, 2000 recipes to choose from and 37 of those you have ALL the ingredients for right now. The others might require you to add one or more ingredients.

Included on my list of things I can make with just the ingredients listed are:

  • lemon pepper chicken
  • chicken taco filling
  • rich winter tomato soup
  • caramelised onions

and the list goes on.

If I take a look at the ‘do you have?’ column and click on ‘Olive oil’ my recipe list that I can cook right now immediately jumps up to 60.  If I add ‘potatoes’ then 120 recipes are mine for the browsing!

Recipes are taken from regular recipe sites such as Food Geek, VegWeb and Recipezaar and you can join up for free to save all your favourite recipes.

The brainchild of Assaf Rozenblatt, the aim of Supercook is to solve the practical problems of modern home cooks:

  • how to waste less food
  • how to use up perishable or seasonal ingredients
  • how to keep track of everything in the kitchen
  • how to save time and money

Well, I take my chef’s hat off to Assaf, because by jove I think he’s done it!

Have a play and let me know what you think!

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About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (7)

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  1. Adriana says:

    wonderful site, thank you for sharing

  2. Charity says:

    That looks really useful, thanks. Will bookmark it now.

  3. sandy says:

    thank you, what a fabulous site, I can now cook supper, toms, eggs and onions

  4. tammy says:

    I’ve often looked for a site like this and am glad you passed this along Mrs Green!
    BTW- my loofah plants are growing like wild and are blooming. I’m shocked this Aussie plant has grown in my garden!

  5. Poppy says:

    Firstly a confession I’ve been to the Med for my hols on a plane! Yes, yes I know! But in my defence, I didn’t book it, DH did and his green ethics are dragging way behind mine 🙁

    The reason for posting on this thread however was the huge amount of food waste I witnessed. This holiday was fully inclusive and boy were people out to get what they considered to be their money’s worth. Three times a day I witnessed people taking plates piled high back to their tables and then more often than not, leaving stacks of it! After a couple of similar incidents with Master P, I managed to drum into him that he only needed to take a small amount and then if he really needed more, he could go back, but to be honest he never did. Why bother when there was also limitless ice-cream and pop on hand 😉

    Surprisingly, although alcolhol was also freely available, I didn’t witness anyone going overboard with that 😉

  6. ruth_dt says:

    How disappointing! That seemed really useful initially, but when I tried it out on my actual leftovers, it had some frustrating weaknesses. It couldn’t tell a cherry from a cherry tomato, or a corn cob from a corn tortilla. I’m sad now.

  7. Mrs Green says:

    Adriana, Charity, Sandy and Tammy – I’m glad you like the site too and Tammy; how very cool about the loofah!

    @Poppy: Oh poppy; I would find that really hard to deal with – seeing all that food waste. Interesting about the alcohol though. I hope you had a good time and enjoyed yourselves, but it’s great to see you back with us 🙂

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