Using No Recipe Cooking to Turn What You Have Into Meals

Using no recipe cooking, or framework recipes, to put together a meal using this simple formula means you can get a balanced meal on the table fast AND hit your macro goals!

A woman cutting vegetables, including bell peppers and carrots.

When you’re trying to save money on groceries by using pantry staples, it’s not always easy to come up with ideas for dinner.

You’re often starting with seemingly random ingredients that feel like a “mystery basket” in the show Chopped. (Canned chicken, frozen broccoli, ½ box of macaroni with ½ packet powdered cheese, rice wine vinegar, and lemonheads… anyone?)

But I promise there’s an easy way to turn weird ingredients into a wonderful recipe, even if you’re not a professional chef. AND you can save money and meet your protein goals!!

What Is No Recipe Cooking?

Rather than following a recipe with a specific ingredient list and quantities and cooking times, no recipe cooking involves using a framework and making substitutions based on what you have on hand to create delicious, balanced meals.

Throw that recipe-book out the window and get cooking!

Various meal ideas for adaptable meals: sliced bread next to a bowl of tuna salad sliced turkey wraps, carrot and celery sticks and apple slices next to a small dish of peanut butter dip, cherries

PANTRY MEAL FORMULA (NO RECIPE COOKING)

The idea behind my pantry meal formula is simple: It’s a FRAMEWORK to help you get dinner on the table.

It’s similar to no recipe cooking, except you can really start with anything.

Here’s how it works:

Every meal starts with a protein.
Then you add produce
Then a starch
And finally, add fat or a sauce.

And that’s it!

Ground beef taco meat in a cast iron skillet - a protein for your no recipe cooking.

PROTEINS FOR ADAPTABLE MEALS

Protein can be meat (chicken, beef, etc.) or non-meat (eggs, tofu, etc.).

Roasted vegetable kale salad in a wooden bowl

PRODUCE OPTIONS FOR NO RECIPE RECIPES

The produce category for no recipe recipes includes non-starchy fruits or vegetables (apples, green beans, peas, etc.).

Three baked sweet potatoes on a plate, sliced open with a pat of butter and garnisehd with green onions

STARCHES FOR RECIPE FORMULAS

Starches for these recipe formulas can be starchy vegetables like potatoes or winter squash, beans and legumes, or whole grains like pasta or rice.

A spoon dripping Thai peanut sauce into a jar filled with the same

FATS AND SAUCES FOR FRAMEWORK RECIPES

Sometimes the fat will be included in the preparation of one of the other components, like tossing veggies with olive oil or coconut oil before roasting, or preparing a fattier protein like Italian Sausage.

Other times, you’ll add fat or sauces later.

Sauces are an easy way to switch up the flavor of a meal while using most of the same components.

Various components for customizable recipes: baby carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, cooked pasta, eggs, two dressings, cooked bacon, cooked chicken

PANTRY MEALS FORMULA

Here’s a chart with five of the most common ingredients for each category. It is by no means exhaustive – I just picked a few of the most common food items for each category.

Remember the recipe format: Protein + Produce + Starch + Fat.

Below the chart, I’ve listed a few meal ideas that can be created using these ingredients (plus a few other pantry staples).

Starch*	Protein	Produce*	Fat
Brown Rice and Quinoa	Chicken	Broccoli and Cauliflower	Nuts and Seeds
Sweet Potato	Fish and Shellfish	Peas and Carrots	Nut and Seed Butter
Pasta	Eggs	Cucumbers and Cherry Tomatoes	Avocado
Oats	Pork and Lean Beef	Green Beans and Zucchini	Mayo
White Potatoes	Beans	Mushrooms and Spinach	Healthy Dressings

*You can use any fruit or vegetable you want. Starchy vegetables should be categorized as starch.

Good Food Meal Ideas:

Brown Rice Bowls with Chicken, Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Thai Peanut Sauce
Greek Pasta with White Beans, Cucumbers, Cherry Tomatoes, and Greek Salad Dressing
Stuffed “Taco Potatoes” with Ground Beef, Sauteed Green Beans and Zucchini
Pasta Carbonara with Fish, Mushrooms, and Spinach
Ramen Noodle Soup with Hard-boiled Eggs, Peas, Carrots, and Chopped Cashews

If you need a dinner idea NOW, just choose an item from each category and portion them out onto your dish.

SAMPLE CUSTOMIZABLE RECIPES

If you’d like to plan or prep ahead of time, you can still use this idea of customizable recipes.

Let me show you how simple this can be in real life. No cookbooks and without too much fuss!

On Sunday, I meal prepped two sheet pans of ground turkey burgers.

7 cooked hamburger patties in 2 rows on a white plate.

On Monday, we ate ground turkey burgers for dinner along with Potato Wedges and fresh veggies. The family had buns. I chose to enjoy a bun-less burger (protein) along with the potato wedges (starch + some fat) and some bell peppers (produce). Topping my burger with cheese and mayo added more fat.

A bowl of Insta Pot brown rice with a spoon, garnished with herbs

Tuesday, I pulled some cooked brown rice (starch) out of the freezer and crumbled some of the ground turkey (protein) on top. I added shredded lettuce, tomatoes, more bell peppers (produce), plus some salsa, cilantro, and a bit of cheddar cheese and sour cream (fat).

A bowl of crunchy vegetable quinoa salad

Wednesday’s meal was Quinoa Vegetable Salad. I already had bell peppers, tomatoes, and cilantro from the taco rice bowls, so I used that same produce for quinoa salad, along with a cucumber. Quinoa itself has both carbs (starch) and protein, and I added more protein with some cooked chicken breast. Thai Peanut Sauce rounded out the fat.

Leftover turkey burgers went into taco salads for lunch, and extra produce became a quick and easy side to fill up our plates.

You can see how some components of these adaptable meals carry over to the next meals, but each one has a totally different flavor. And you don’t have to have a huge meal prep session either! Thinking in terms of protein + produce + starch + fat makes it easy to put meals together.

Not only does this framework save you money, but it’s also a tool I teach my nutrition coaching clients for building meals that feed the family AND meet their macros. Once you decide on each component, you just serve yourself according to your protein goals!