What people search for when they want to cook with what they have
Google Ads Keyword Planner, United States, Google web search, July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2026, exported 2026-08-05 (11,163 queries). souva.app combination index as of 2026-09-10.
Google records 63 phrasings of the literal question, from "what can I make with what I have" to "recipes with what I have in my pantry". 9 of them sit in the 5,000-a-month band, 48 of the 63 are rated Low competition, and together they add up to about 50,400 searches a month. That is 116 times smaller than the "dinner ideas" cluster and 38 times smaller than "leftover" queries, which is where most of the same intent actually goes.
The question, in its own words
Every phrasing in the export that asks the question directly, with Google's monthly volume band and its competition rating. Volumes are bands (50, 500, 5,000, 50,000 or 500,000 a month), so a "5,000" is a range, not a count.
| Query | Searches / mo | Competition |
|---|---|---|
| i have these ingredients what can i make | 5,000 | Low |
| recipes with ingredients i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what can i cook with ingredients i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what can i cook with what i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what can i make from the ingredients i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what can i make with the ingredients i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what can i make with what i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what to cook with ingredients i have | 5,000 | Low |
| what to make with what i have | 5,000 | Low |
| make food with what i have | 500 | Low |
| recipe finder with ingredients i have | 500 | Low |
| recipes with what i have | 500 | Low |
| what can i bake with what i have | 500 | Low |
| what can i make with whats in my fridge | 500 | Low |
| what i can make with what i have | 500 | Low |
48 more phrasings sit in the smallest band, about 50 searches a month each; they are in the CSV.
How it compares with the bigger ways of asking
The same intent, "I have food, what do I cook", is asked far more often through a dish-shaped query than a pantry-shaped one. Combined band volume per cluster and the number of distinct phrasings in each:
| Cluster | Phrasings | Combined / mo | Low competition | Largest query |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dinner ideas | 265 | 5,861,900 | 58 of 265 | dinner ideas (500,000) |
| Leftover something | 1730 | 1,914,200 | 1441 of 1730 | leftover chicken recipes (50,000) |
| Meal ideas | 67 | 1,335,800 | 19 of 67 | breakfast meal ideas (500,000) |
| What can I make with what I have | 63 | 50,400 | 48 of 63 | what can i make with what i have (5,000) |
| Recipe finder | 92 | 25,700 | 65 of 92 | recipe finder (5,000) |
| Fridge or pantry recipes | 11 | 3,250 | 8 of 11 | pantry recipes (500) |
Leftover what?
"Leftover" is the biggest pantry-shaped cluster: 1,730 phrasings. Ranked by the ingredient named, with the number of distinct phrasings each one gets:
Ingredient pairs people name
Queries that name two ingredients and ask for recipes, in the shapes "X and Y recipes", "recipes with X and Y" or "what can I make with X and Y". Only pairs of plain ingredient nouns are counted, so "mac and cheese" is not here.
| Pair | Searches / mo | Phrasings | Largest query |
|---|---|---|---|
| chicken and rice | 1,015,500 | 6 | chicken and rice recipes |
| chicken and pasta | 50,000 | 1 | chicken and pasta recipes |
| ground beef and potatoes | 50,000 | 1 | recipes with ground beef and potatoes |
| chicken and mushrooms | 50,000 | 1 | mushroom and chicken recipes |
| pasta and steak | 50,000 | 1 | steak and pasta recipes |
| eggs and potatoes | 5,050 | 2 | eggs and potatoes recipe |
| beans and rice | 5,000 | 1 | rice and beans recipes |
| rice and rotisserie chicken | 5,000 | 1 | recipes with rotisserie chicken and rice |
| pasta and rotisserie chicken | 5,000 | 1 | recipes with rotisserie chicken and pasta |
| eggs and sweet potatoes | 500 | 1 | egg and sweet potato recipe |
What people ask souva.app
souva.app answers the question directly: type ingredients, get real recipes that use them. Every combination that returned at least 5 recipes becomes a page, so the index of pages is a record of what people asked. Right now that is 99 combinations listing 2,809 recipes. The ingredients named most often, by number of pages:
How much each page has behind it. A page lists at most 48 recipes, so the top bucket is every combination that fills the page rather than a count of what exists for it:
The 20 combinations with the most recipes
Method
- Search data is a Google Ads Keyword Planner export seeded from recipe and food terms (11,163 queries, United States, Google web search, July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2026). Keyword Planner reports volume in bands; a cluster's combined figure is the sum of band values and should be read as an order of magnitude.
- A term that is absent from the export was never asked for, not measured at zero.
- Clusters are regular expressions over the query text; the literal question is any query of the form "what can I make/cook with what I have", "recipes with ingredients I have" or "with what I have in my fridge".
- souva.app figures come from the live index of combination pages, rebuilt hourly. A page counts once it lists 5 or more recipes. Counts change as people search.
- The tables and charts on this page may be reused with a link to souva.app/what-people-cook-with. The underlying export is Google's.
Data: download the CSV. Questions: support@souva.app. The search itself is at What can I make?