Bring your recipes together before you shop
Add the ingredients you need
Write one ingredient per line: amount, unit, name. You can use “2 cups rice”, “1 lb chicken thighs”, “1 can (15 oz) black beans”, “3 eggs” or “fresh dill”. Fractions such as “½” and “1 1/2” work too. Keep preparation notes after a comma or in brackets. You’ll buy 2 3/4 cups of milk if one recipe needs a cup and another needs 1 3/4. Check separate lines for cups and cans yourself; they can’t be combined. Any unreadable line stays visible for you to correct.
Use what’s already in your kitchen
Check your cupboards first. Enter “oil” or “cumin” without an amount to remove it from your shopping. Enter “1 cup rice” or “2 Tbsp soy sauce” to buy only what’s missing. Be specific when varieties matter: “oil” covers both vegetable and sesame oil, “cheese” covers cheddar and mozzarella, and “stock” covers broth.
Buy whole packs and plan for leftovers
Turn on pack rounding if you want whole cans, jars, packages and vegetables. You’ll see the leftovers beside each amount, so you can use them in another dinner. Expect garlic in heads of about ten cloves, broth in 32-oz cartons, milk in quarts, cheese in 8-oz bags, pasta and dry beans in 16-oz packs, and ground meat in 1-lb packs. Check the package size in your shop. For spices and loose produce, buy the recipe amount or use what you have.
Check prices in your shop and convert cups to grams separately if you need to. Season “to taste” yourself; those amounts won’t be added together.
Why you might get 2/3 of a can
A serving is Food Hero’s own measure, for example 1 cup of Black Bean Soup from a 12 cups batch. Choosing 4 servings there buys 1/3 of every ingredient in the published recipe. If that leaves you with 2/3 of a can: cook the whole batch and freeze half. Or turn on pack rounding to see the leftover amounts before you shop.
The recipes and serving sizes come from Food Hero, a tested collection run by Oregon State University Extension. Follow the linked recipe for the method. The FDA and USDA say leftovers keep three to four days in a fridge at 40°F (4°C) or below. The plans on this site stay inside that limit.