What is for dinner, answered from what is already home
The question arrives every evening, usually when nobody has the patience for it. Heilsa answers it from the pantry you already have rather than from a feed of things you cannot make.
Heilsa16:02The decision is hard because the information is scattered
Someone shopped on Saturday. Someone else used the last of the rice. The recipe you saved needs three things you are not sure about. Answering what is for dinner means rebuilding the state of your own kitchen from memory, every time, usually while hungry.
Start from the pantry, not from inspiration
Heilsa keeps a shared record of what your household has. When you open recipes, that record is already applied: dishes you can cook now sit ahead of dishes you cannot. You are choosing between real options rather than filtering a catalogue by hand.
Missing ingredients stay attached to the decision
When a dish is two items short, Heilsa says which two. Put it on the plan and those two go on the shared shopping list with the dinner they are for, so the next trip has context and the dish is still on the table later in the week.
Answer it tonight, or answer it for the fortnight
Nothing here requires a plan. Deciding at six from what is home is fully supported and always will be. But if you would rather get several evenings out of the way at once, Heilsa plans up to fourteen days of dinners from the same pantry. A day you leave empty stays empty: if food at home needs using, Free tonight? offers one dinner that uses it that afternoon, and the notification can be turned off.
In the app
How Heilsa does it.
Meal planning
Dinner plans that start from the fridge
Plan up to a fortnight of dinners. Heilsa ranks the choices by what needs using and what you already have, and leaves the deciding to you.
Meal planning in detail
Recipes
Recipes, checked against your kitchen
A hundred curated recipes and every one you add, each marked Can make now, Almost there or Missing key from what is at home.
Recipes in detail
Pantry wall
A pantry that tells you what to use first
Every food at home on one wall, each with its own drawing, and a Use soon shelf on top for whatever has the least time left.
Pantry wall in detail
Questions
Plain answers.
- Does Heilsa tell me what to cook?
- It narrows the field rather than picking for you. Heilsa shows what your pantry covers, so the choice is between dishes you can actually make tonight.
- Do I need to keep the pantry perfectly up to date?
- No. Coverage degrades gracefully. Items Heilsa does not recognise stay out of the calculation rather than producing a wrong answer, and staples like salt and oil are assumed present.
Where else it helps
- Reduce food wasteMost household food waste is quiet: things bought twice, or forgotten at the back. Heilsa keeps the pantry visible so it gets cooked.
- Shared shopping listA shared grocery list that knows why each item is on it, and puts what you buy back into the pantry when you get home.
- Pantry inventoryA shared pantry for households that pays for its own maintenance by driving dinner decisions and the shopping list.
- Cook what you haveHeilsa checks recipes against your household pantry, so you see what you can cook now and what is a couple of items away.
Try it with your own kitchen
Heilsa comes to the App Store in November. Join now, through TestFlight, and your household keeps it free through 2027.
iPhone with iOS 15.1 or later, in the UK and Switzerland. Somewhere else?