AI-Driven Culinary Masterpiece: The Chefbot’s Guide to Creating Delicious, Algorithmic Recipes

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• Your Own Personal Recipe Writer
• Cooking with ChatGPT

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have soared in popularity, but we’re still figuring out the practical uses. One thing ChatGPT is particularly good at is making recipes for anything you ask for, but are the recipes any good? Let’s get cooking.

Your Own Personal Recipe Writer

Among the many things ChatGPT can do , it’s particularly useful as a cooking assistant. It’s like having the mind of a cookbook writer at your disposal. You can be super vague and simply ask “what should I make for dinner?” Sometimes you’ll get a recipe with ingredients and instructions, other times you’ll get a list of ideas.

It’s even more impressive if you get specific with your requests. For example, I asked for a dish that combines German and Mexican cuisine. ChatGPT gave me a recipe for “Sausage and Potato Tacos with Spicy Sauerkraut Slaw.” I wasn’t able to find a similar recipe online, so it seems to be a somewhat unique idea.

Perhaps the most practical use is including the ingredients you have on hand. Let’s say you have some chicken, sweet potatoes, rice, and cashews. I asked for a recipe that included those ingredients, and ChatGPT spit out a recipe for “Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry with Cashews and Basmati Rice.”

Now, all of these recipes sound good in theory, but that’s the tricky thing about ChatGPT—it’s very good at being confidently wrong . Are these recipes actually any good in real life? Let’s find out.

Cooking with ChatGPT

Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek

To put ChatGPT’s recipe-writing skills to the test, I wanted to challenge it with a real-world situation. The first thing I did was ask for four random ingredients. ChatGPT gave me:

1. Ground cinnamon
2. Chickpeas
3. Red bell pepper
4. Coconut milk

Sold. Then I asked, “What’s a recipe that uses those ingredients?” The result was a recipe titled: “Coconut Chickpea Curry with Red Bell Pepper and Cinnamon.” Admittedly, that’s not terribly inventive, but it sounded good. I decided to head to the kitchen and give it a try—sticking very close to the recipe instructions.

Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek

Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek

Chickpea and Red Pepper Curry with Coconut Milk and Cinnamon

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (14 ounces) coconut milk
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Instructions:

• Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes.
• Add the minced garlic and diced red bell pepper to the skillet and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.
• Add the ground cinnamon, ground cumin, and cayenne pepper to the skillet and stir to combine with the onion and red bell pepper.
• Add the drained and rinsed chickpeas to the skillet and stir to combine with the spice mixture.
• Pour the can of coconut milk into the skillet and stir to combine with the chickpeas and vegetables.
• Reduce the heat to low and let the curry simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened and the flavors have melded together.
• Season the curry with salt and pepper to taste.
• Serve the curry over rice or with naan bread, and garnish with chopped fresh cilantro.

Enjoy your delicious and flavorful Coconut Chickpea Curry with Red Bell Pepper and Cinnamon!

I’m happy to report the recipe was easy to follow and the dish was pretty good! Cinnamon was the wild card, and it blended in okay. I think a little less would have been better. Some tomatoes in the sauce would have been nice, too. I was pleasantly surprised by how spicy it came out, though. Overall, this is a super solid, easy recipe that would be a perfect weeknight dinner.

This is exactly the type of thing I can actually see myself using on a regular basis. It’s incredibly handy to be able to ask for a recipe that incorporates ingredients you already have on hand, or for a specific type of food you’re in the mood for.

Search engines and some recipe websites can do this too, but ChatGPT has a few advantages. It’s easier to ask for a recipe with conversational language, and it eliminates the indecision that comes with wading through hundreds of results. If you find that as useful as I do, you should give it a try .