CookMaxWhat can I cook tonight?
Type the ingredients you already have. Cook Max ranks the recipes you can actually make right now — across 16 world cuisines, all tested in real home kitchens.
Butter Chicken & Naan
Fresh Pasta
Tonkotsu Ramen
Street Tacos
Pad Thai
Dim Sum
Bibimbap
Mezze Platter
Shawarma & Hummus
Croissants
Classic Burger
Pho
Buddha Bowl
Pancakes & Berries
Roast Chicken & Veg
Injera & Stews
Tell us what's in your kitchen
Popular cuisines to explore
Jump straight into a region — every cuisine page opens with the basics, the pantry staples and the full recipe collection. Or keep scrolling for how Cook Max works.
Healthy
Light, balanced bowls
109 recipes
Indian
Spice-forward classics
116 recipes
Breakfast
Mornings, made easy
118 recipes
Italian
Pasta, pizza, comfort
101 recipes
Chinese
Wok-fired favourites
103 recipes
Thai
Fresh, fragrant, fiery
100 recipes
Japanese
Clean flavours, umami
101 recipes
Korean
Bold, bright, fermented
99 recipes
Vietnamese
Fresh herbs and broth
104 recipes
Mexican
Tacos, salsas, smoke
102 recipes
Mediterranean
Olive oil and sunshine
104 recipes
Middle Eastern
Warm spice, fresh herbs
107 recipes
French
Bistro classics
86 recipes
American
Comfort, grills, diners
94 recipes
Continental
European classics
110 recipes
Ethiopian
Injera, berbere, stews
97 recipes
Cook Max is an independent recipe and cooking-companion site built around a simple, awkward truth about home cooking: most of us do not shop for a recipe — we open the fridge, look at what is there, and try to work out dinner. So we built the opposite of a normal recipe site. Type the ingredients sitting in your kitchen and Cook Max shows you the dishes you can cook tonight, sorted by how completely your pantry matches each recipe.
The library covers 1651+ home-tested recipes across 16 cuisines — Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Mediterranean, French, American and more — plus 6 long-form cooking guides on technique, pantry building and meal planning. Everything is free, no account is required to browse, and every recipe is written for a regular domestic kitchen, not a restaurant line.
Why Cook Max is different
Cook from what you have
Pantry-first ranking. The recipes that fit your kitchen rise to the top — no scrolling past dishes you cannot make tonight.
World cuisines, home kitchens
16 cuisines, all rewritten for ordinary equipment and ingredients you can actually buy at the supermarket. No restaurant kit required.
Human-tested, honestly labelled
Every recipe is cooked at least twice before publishing. Where we use software to help write helper text, we say so — read the policy.
How it works
- Step 1
Type your ingredients
Open the pantry page and add what you have — eggs, rice, a tin of tomatoes, half a cabbage. No fixed list; type freely.
- Step 2
See ranked matches
Cook Max scores every recipe by how completely your pantry covers it. Full matches first, near-misses below so you know what a quick shop would unlock.
- Step 3
Cook with clear steps
Each recipe page has the ingredients, an estimated time, plain-language steps and visual cues — golden, translucent, crisp — so you can trust your eyes over the clock.
- Step 4
Save, print or share
Bookmark the keepers, print a clean copy for the kitchen counter, or share a link with a friend — every share credits Cook Max.
What you'll find inside
The library spans quick weeknight dinners, slow weekend projects, breakfasts, desserts and everything in between — with a clean vegetarian / non-vegetarian filter and a tag system for quick, kid-friendly, one-pot, high-protein and budget-friendly cooking. Search by name or ingredient.
From the cooking guides
See all →Longer reads that go deeper than any single recipe — pantry building, knife skills, salt and seasoning, weekday meal planning and the small habits that quietly improve every meal.
- Pantry Cooking 101: How to Cook Well From What You Already Have7 min read
- Cuisine Starter Pantries: What to Stock for Indian, Italian, Chinese, Mexican and Thai Cooking8 min read
- Knife Skills for Home Cooks: The Five Cuts That Cover Almost Every Recipe6 min read
- Measuring and Substitutions: A Sane Guide to Swapping Ingredients Without Breaking the Recipe6 min read
Featured recipes this week
A small rotating selection from the library — usually a mix of a quick weeknight win, a weekend project, a vegetarian dish and something a bit unfamiliar.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cook Max free to use?
Yes. Browsing recipes, searching, pantry matching, reading the cooking guides and saving favourites are all free. We do not run a paid tier. The site is supported by tasteful advertising and the occasional affiliate link, which are always clearly disclosed.
Do I need an account?
No account is required to browse recipes, search or use the pantry matcher. Creating a free account only adds the ability to sync your saved recipes across devices. Everything important works without signing in.
How does pantry matching actually work?
You type the ingredients you already have. Cook Max compares your list to the ingredient list of every recipe in the library, scores each one by how completely your kitchen matches it, and ranks the best fits first. The recipes you can cook right now appear at the top; recipes that need one or two extra items appear below, so you can decide if a quick shop is worth it.
Are the recipes actually tested?
Every recipe is cooked at least twice in a regular home kitchen before it goes live. We use standard pans, a standard oven and supermarket ingredients. Cook times and quantities are conservative estimates from those real cooks, and we always describe the visual cue (golden, translucent, crisp) so you can trust your eyes over the clock.
Do you use AI to write the recipes?
No. The ingredients, quantities and method on every recipe page are written by a human and reviewed before publishing. We do use software to help generate the short introduction paragraph, the ingredient notes and the frequently-asked questions on individual recipe pages, based on each recipe’s own metadata. The full policy is on our editorial-policy page.
Can I save or print recipes?
Yes. Every recipe has a save button (tap the bookmark), a print-friendly view and a share button that works with email, WhatsApp and the usual social networks. Shared links always credit Cook Max so friends can find the rest of the library.
How Cook Max works behind the scenes
We are an independent project — not backed by a publisher, food brand or supermarket chain. That independence shapes everything: which recipes we publish, how we test them, and how we talk about the products we link to. The links below explain it in plain language.