Use the Meal Plan Randomizer

Can’t decide what to cook this week? The meal plan randomizer picks recipes from your collection to fill empty slots. It’s a great way to rediscover recipes you’ve saved but forgotten about, and it takes the decision fatigue out of meal planning.

How to Use the Randomizer

1. Go to the Plan tab
2. Tap the ••• icon at the top to open the Manage week sheet
3. Choose Generate random week (Auto-fill week with recipes)
4. Step through the 3-step wizard:
   • Step 1 — What meals? Select which meal types to fill (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, etc.)
   • Step 2 — Any preferences? Optionally filter by Favorites, a minimum rating, cuisines, or diets — or choose Skip, use all recipes
   • Step 3 — Your week. Review the suggestions, Re-roll any individual slot or Re-roll all, then tap Confirm plan
5. Your week fills with recipes from your collection

If the Week Already Has Meals

If the week already has recipes planned, the wizard asks how to handle them:

• Replace all — clears the week and fills it with fresh random suggestions
• Fill empty slots only — keeps your existing meals and only fills the gaps

This lets you randomize a half-planned week without losing the meals you already chose.

Reviewing Suggestions

On the Your week step you’re not locked in. For each suggested recipe:

• Keep it if it looks good — no action needed
• Re-roll it to swap that single slot for a different recipe
• Re-roll all to reshuffle the whole week at once

Once you’re happy, tap Confirm plan. The randomizer is a starting point, not a commitment — think of it as Cookonut saying, “How about these?”

How the Randomizer Picks

The randomizer selects from your saved recipe collection. It tries to:

• Match meal types — breakfast recipes go in breakfast slots, dinner recipes in dinner slots
• Vary the selection — avoid suggesting the same recipe twice in one week
• Use recipes you haven’t cooked recently — to bring variety to your rotation

Randomize Only the Empty Slots

If most of your week is already planned and you just need help with a few meals:

1. Open Manage week (•••) and choose Generate random week
2. Step through the wizard
3. When asked, choose Fill empty slots only — your existing plans stay untouched

This gives you control over which meals get randomized.

When to Use the Randomizer

Weekly planning sessions — Generate a random week at the start of your planning session to get a starting point, then refine from there.

Breaking out of a rut — If you’ve been cooking the same five meals on repeat, the randomizer surfaces recipes you’ve forgotten about.

When you’re uninspired — Sometimes you just don’t want to think about food planning. Let Cookonut do the thinking.

Trying new things — If you’ve imported many recipes but only cook a handful regularly, the randomizer pushes you to try something new.

Tips for Better Randomizer Results

• The more recipes you’ve saved, the better — a collection of 30+ recipes gives the randomizer enough variety to produce interesting plans
• Tag your recipes accurately — meal type tags help the randomizer place breakfast recipes at breakfast time and dinner recipes at dinner time
• Curate your collection — if there are recipes you never want to cook, delete them so they don’t appear in random suggestions
• Use cookbooks strategically — you might randomize from a specific cookbook like “Weeknight Dinners” for weekday meals
• Randomize early in the week — plan on Sunday so you can build a shopping list and shop before the week starts

After Randomizing

Once you’ve reviewed and confirmed the randomized plan:

1. Tap the cart icon in the Plan header to open Add to Shopping List
2. Select the days to add and confirm
3. Check the list on the List tab and add any extras
4. You’re ready for the week

The whole process — generate random week, review, build shopping list — can take less than five minutes.

The Randomizer Is a Premium Feature

Generating a random week is part of Smart Meal Planning, included with Cookonut Premium. Building your weekly plan by hand stays free on every plan.

If you just want a single random suggestion at no cost, use Pick a Recipe instead — the dice button on your recipe list picks one random recipe from your collection on any plan.