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What should we eat tonight? How to stop answering every day

The question is not hard because there are too few recipes. It is hard because it gets asked at half past five, when there is nothing left to make decisions with. Below are seven concrete answers for tonight and a suggestion for how to avoid answering again tomorrow.

Why it is so hard right at that moment

Because it is an open question asked at the worst possible time. There is no frame: everything is technically possible, so everything is equally difficult. At the same time there is a deadline, a feeling of hunger, and usually somebody else waiting for the answer.

It is also a question that gets asked again tomorrow. Seventeen times a week if you count the lunches. A choice that has to be made from scratch every single day is not a choice but a tax.

That is why finding more recipes rarely works. It makes the pool bigger and the decision harder. What works is making the pool smaller and making the choice at a different time from the one where you are most tired.

Seven answers for tonight

Here is ordinary Danish everyday food from Madmakker's own collection, sorted by how long it takes from standing in the kitchen to having food. The timings are the app's own and include preparation. The meals are Danish; the names are given in Danish with a short explanation.

  • Biksemad — 25 minutes. Danish hash: potatoes browned crisp with bacon and onion, with a fried egg on top of each portion.
  • Tacos with beef — 30 minutes. Spiced beef in crisp shells that everyone fills themselves. Rarely negotiated over.
  • Pasta with meat sauce — 35 minutes. The sauce simmers while the pasta boils, and the leftovers only improve.
  • Frikadeller with red cabbage and buttered potatoes — 35 minutes. Danish pan-fried meatballs, and no sauce to keep an eye on.
  • Boller i karry — 35 minutes. Meatballs in a mild curry sauce with rice. Can be made in your sleep, and everybody eats it.
  • Hakkebøf with soft onions — 35 minutes, twelve of which belong to the onions. A beef patty with slowly fried onions.
  • Oven-baked chicken with chips — 45 minutes, but only one tray to wash up.

If none of them is the answer, perhaps the answer is not a meal at all. Buying something ready-made is a valid choice on an evening when there is nothing left to give. It is not a defeat, and it is not something an app should have an opinion about.

How to avoid the question tomorrow

1. Move the decision away from half past five

Plan the week at the weekend, or let something else plan it. It is the same decision, but made somewhere there is capacity for it.

2. Make the pool smaller, not bigger

Ten meals you like and can cook beat three hundred you will never get to. A fixed pool also means the shopping looks like itself from week to week.

3. Plan the leftovers as real days

Cook for two days and write the second one into the plan. That halves the number of times you have to start, and starting, not cooking, is the expensive part.

4. Keep two days that demand nothing

Eggs, pancakes, or whatever you can make without reading. A plan with no emergency exit lasts until the first bad day and no longer.

5. Let the shopping list follow from the plan

When the list is gathered from the whole week, the cucumber gets used twice instead of bought twice. And on a bad day there are still ingredients for the meal you had in mind.

How Madmakker does it

Madmakker answers the question before it gets asked. The app lays out the whole week's lunches and dinners from the size of the household and a weekly budget you set yourself, works leftovers in, and gathers the shopping list from the week's meals, sorted by your shop's order.

If the day's meal is wrong anyway, it is swapped with one tap and the shopping list corrects itself. If there is no capacity for anything at all, the »Orker ikke« button — »can't face it« — gives one suggestion based on what you have in the cupboard, instead of a list to choose from.

The app is free, needs no account and works without an internet connection. Its interface and recipes are in Danish. See what else it does, or read why meal plans fall apart and what usually helps.

Questions

What should we eat tonight when nobody has done the shopping?

Choose a meal built on what is usually in the house: an omelette, a thick baked omelette, hash, or pasta with whatever is in the cupboard. Madmakker's »Orker ikke« button does exactly that. It gives one suggestion based on your own ingredients, and one of the options is buying something ready-made.

Why is it so hard to decide what to eat?

Because it is a completely open choice that has to be made late in the day, when the ability to make choices is lowest, and because it has to be made from scratch every day. It helps to make the pool of meals smaller and to move the decision to a time other than the evening itself.

Is there an app that simply decides what we are eating?

Yes. Madmakker lays out the whole week's lunches and dinners for you from the household and the budget, and makes the shopping list. It is free, needs no account and is available for Android. You can swap the days you do not fancy with one tap. The app is in Danish.

How many meals should be in a fixed pool?

Ten to fifteen dinners is enough that the weeks do not look alike, without the choice growing large again. What matters is that you both like them and can cook them without reading the recipe every time.

Get Madmakker

Get it free on Google Play Free · Android 7.0 and later · No ads

This page was last reviewed on 3 September 2026 against Madmakker 1.2. If something here is wrong, write to kontakt@nixio.dk.