Plan a week of dinners in 15 minutes.

Before you start

Pick a regular slot: Sunday morning with coffee, Thursday on the bus. The same time each week is what turns planning into a habit rather than a chore.

Have three things to hand: your calendar, a quick look in the fridge, and a list of ten to fifteen dinners your household reliably eats. If you don't have that last list, write it now. It's the most useful thing in this guide, and it makes every future week faster.

The 15-minute method

1. Map the week (3 minutes)

Go day by day and note how much time and energy each evening has. Mark the late nights that need something under 30 minutes, the night someone's out, and the night that's leftovers or pizza. Many weeks need five real dinners, not seven.

2. Use what you have first (3 minutes)

What's open, what's wilting, what's been in the freezer since spring? Put dinners that use those early in the week. If something needs thawing, write that down too.

3. Fill the nights (5 minutes)

Fill the remaining nights mostly from your regulars, and add one new recipe, two at most, on a night with time to spare. Theme nights (pasta Monday, tacos Thursday) cut the choice down further. Cook once, eat twice: a pot of chili on Sunday can be Tuesday's dinner or a few lunches.

4. Write one list (3 minutes)

Go recipe by recipe and write down what you need, adding up repeats (two recipes with onions means one line for three onions). Cross off what's already in the cupboard, then group the list by where things are in your store.

5. Put it where everyone can see it (1 minute)

On the fridge, in a shared app, in the family calendar. A plan only one person knows about tends to turn into takeout. Note the jobs for the night before, such as thawing or marinating.

Doing it in Hedgehog Chef

The same five steps, with less writing. Open Plan: computers get a week board you can drag recipes onto, phones get the week as a list with today first.

1. Map the week. Use + on a day (Add on a phone) for the nights that aren't recipes. Leftovers, Eat out and Pizza night are ready to pick, or type any name.
2. Use what you have. On the Pantry page, What can I make? ranks your recipes by how much of each you already have, and shows what's missing.
3. Fill the nights. On a big screen, drag recipes from the shelf beside the week, which has tabs for Favorites, Recent and Never cooked. In an empty week, Plan from your favorites fills the open dinners with favorites you pick. When this week looks like last week, use Copy last week.
4. Plan leftovers. On a meal's menu, choose Plan leftovers… and pick the day. The original meal's servings grow to cover both, so the shopping list does too.
5. Make the list. Choose Shop for this week. Every planned recipe's ingredients go onto one list, scaled to the servings you planned, with amounts merged, sorted by aisle and, if you like, minus what's in the pantry.

Everyone in your kitchen sees the same plan, and the Today page shows tonight's dinner. Turn on reminders in Settings → Notifications for a nudge the night before when a recipe needs thawing or prep, and another to start cooking in time for dinner. If a week went well, choose Save this week as a menu… from the week's ⋯ button to plan it again later.

Or ask the planner

When even fifteen minutes is too many, ask the AI planner in plain words:

• “Plan next week's dinners, nothing over 40 minutes.”
• “Use up the spinach before Friday.”
• “Make Tuesday vegetarian.”

The planner works from your saved recipes, what you've cooked lately, the pantry and your household's preferences and allergies, which you set in Settings → Household & diet. It proposes a plan as a card, and nothing changes until you apply it. You can edit it first, discard it, or undo it afterwards. AI can get things wrong, so check allergens yourself. Daily allowances apply; see pricing, and the planner page for what else it can do.

Making it stick

• Plan the same day each week. Fifteen minutes on Sunday beats an hour of “what's for dinner?” spread across the week.
• Rotate, don't reinvent. Three or four saved weeks on rotation, with a new recipe dropped in now and then, covers a month.
• Leave a gap. One unplanned night soaks up leftovers, invitations and the evening nobody feels like cooking.
• Shop once. The plan only saves time if the list covers it. Sharing the list with the household helps; see how to share a grocery list.

Short of recipes to plan with? Bring them in from websites, cookbook photos and videos first. The import page lists every way.