Bored with cooking? Stuck in a rut? Lost your motivation? We’ve got 20 solid ideas to help you find inspiration for cooking—and none of them involve Pinterest.
Motivation to cook can be hard to come by at times, but here you’ll find creative suggestions to help you get out of a cooking rut or even just give you a nudge for tonight’s dinner.
If routine themed food nights like Taco Tuesday are no longer working their magic, one of these ideas is guaranteed to work!
1. Join a Cooking Challenge 😋
This is our #1 top tip because it worked so well for us. A fun cooking challenge can get you back into the swing of things. It keeps you from getting stuck in a rut because you’ll try new ingredients, cuisines, and techniques. Reddit’s 52 Weeks of Cooking Challenge was our sanity-saving, go-to activity in the early days of the pandemic and continues to inspire week after week, year after year.
2. Choose one new recipe
If you are stuck in a rut, choose a new-to-you recipe. Follow the recipe exactly as it is written—this is harder than it sounds if you are a regular cook. Try choosing a recipe with a flavor profile that is different from your usual cooking.
If choosing is the hard part, go to your bookshelf and with your eyes closed pull out a cookbook, open the book without looking, one of the recipes on the page is what you are cooking for dinner tonight or tomorrow.
3. Find a cooking project
Go big! Choose a recipe you’ve always wanted to master.Or a cuisine you are curious about. Compare multiple versions of the recipe. Research the history of the dish. Get ready and organized before starting to cook or bake. Maybe it takes an entire day or weekend to prepare the recipe, or maybe just your research takes a while—either way, you get deeply involved in a fun new topic.
4. Use forgotten pantry items
Clean out your pantry and spices. Is your pantry stocked to the gills? Pull out a more obscure item and use it as a starting point to find a new recipe.
Have a group of friends all find one random ingredient in their pantry— everyone swap and make a recipe with the item you receive.
While cleaning, gather pantry foods that are nearing their expiration date and search for recipes using the ingredients.
5. Use forgotten kitchen tools
Open up your cabinets and pull out unused kitchen tools. Everyone has at least one gadget that hasn’t seen the light of day in a while—food mill, mandolin, spiralizer, pineapple cutter, fondue pot, ice cream maker, juicer—any of these can serve as inspiration for cooking or baking.
6. Purchase a new tool
Is there a kitchen tool or appliance that you’ve been eyeing for a while? A new kitchen toy might be all it takes to rekindle your interest in cooking. For some, it might be a stand mixer. For others, it might be a mortar and pestle. Recently, we bought crumpet rings after seeing a recipe on The Splendid Table.
7. Try hands-on learning
Sign up for a live in-person class or virtual cooking class.
Invite a chef into your home to cook with you and friends or family.
Or you become the teacher. Teach a favorite recipe to your kids, nieces, nephews, or grandkids. This can be done in-person or via Zoom/FaceTime.
8. Cook with friends
Choose a recipe that you and your friends can each make and discuss. Or choose a cookbook that everyone uses for the month—whether you cook the same recipes or not is not important.
9. Involve your kids
Find inspiration on your kids’ bookshelves. When my children were younger we had too many kids books about food to count. Recreate recipes from their favorites books. Read Strega Nona and make pasta. Read The Story of Little Babaji and have pancakes for dinner. Read A Fine Dessert and make blackberry fool.
Teaching older kids to how to grill is one strategy for keeping teens involved with family dinner.
Children’s cookbooks (our top suggestions) provide easy and straightforward recipes. We still have some favorite recipes in rotation at our house.
10. Visit a farmer’s market
It is almost impossible to visit a farmer’s market and not return home excited to cook something.
11. Plant your own garden
Even if you only have the space for one type of plant—tomatoes, basil, peppers, etc.—tending your own garden and using your own harvest is fun.
12. Try a new cookbook
Your local library is a good resource for cookbooks, and checking out a book allows you to “try before you buy.” Or visit a bookstore and treat yourself to a new cookbook. If cookbooks don’t hold your interest or you don’t have the room, try an online resource like Cook’s Illustrated.
See all of our cookbook lists for ideas.
13. Pick up a new magazine
Buy a glossy magazine with the intention of making a certain number of recipes from the issue. Or let your kids thumb through the magazine and pick out what looks good.
14. Try a newsletter
The NYT Cooking newsletter is a good resource for weekly recipe suggestions. Mark Bittman’s newsletter is what alerted us to our #1 top tip above. Or if you are interested in slow cooking, sign up for our newsletter.
15. Watch cooking shows
Pinterest and Instagram can cause distress, but watching real cooks in the kitchen is usually inspiring. And it can be especially helpful if you are new to cooking. Here are some entertaining YouTube channels for cooking inspiration:
16. Follow your whims
Prepare whatever makes things most enjoyable for you—one day it might be a super easy salad, the next it might be an involved cooking project.
Craving a dish from childhood? Research recipes and make it.
Missing a dish from a favorite restaurant? Try to recreate it at home.
See a new ingredient? Buy it and figure out how to use it later.
17. Work backwards
If planning dinner still has you down, start with dessert. Knowing what you want to serve for dessert can serve as inspiration for what to serve for dinner. And when you have a decadent dessert waiting in the wings, you can opt for a light dinner.
18. Join a Facebook group
If your friends aren’t keen on cooking, look for Facebook groups of like-minded people. Food52 moderates both a Baking Club and a Cookbook Club.
19. Follow the seasons
Let the changing seasons inspire you. Visit the grocery store and buy what is in season and on sale—this can easily guide your menu.
20. Remember your why
Finally, if you are tired of cooking, but want to stay engaged in the kitchen, pause to reflect on why cooking at home is important to you. Budget and family goals were top of mind when we decided to buy a slow cooker.
Whether you have a health, budget, or family related goal, remind yourself of what you are working towards and stick with your plan of cooking at home.
