"What's for dinner?" is easier to answer once a week than every evening at six. A meal plan also fixes the shopping: you buy what the week needs, once, instead of popping out for an onion on Wednesday. This guide walks through how to plan a week of meals, then how to do it with Recipe Cat, our recipe box and meal planner for iPhone, where the grocery list builds itself from the meals you plan.
How to plan a week of meals
You don't need a spreadsheet or a system. A few habits do most of the work:
- Start with the busy days. Look at the week ahead and put the quickest meals on the evenings with practice, late shifts or guests.
- Plan only what you'll really cook. If that's just dinners, plan just dinners.
- Reuse ingredients. If Monday needs half a bag of spinach, put another spinach dish later in the week.
- Write the ingredients down with the meal. This is what turns a plan into a shopping list.
- Keep the weeks that worked. A good week is worth repeating.
Plan the week in Recipe Cat
- Open Recipe Cat. On What are you making?, tap Meal plan. The app opens straight into it next time; the grid button at the top left brings you back.
- You see This week: a card for each day, starting on your calendar's first day of the week. Each day starts with + Breakfast, + Lunch and + Dinner.
- Tap + Dinner on Monday. In Add a meal, type the meal's name, like "Chicken curry". Meal and Day are already set to the button you tapped, and you can change them. Serves is optional.
- Under Ingredients, type one ingredient per line, with its amount: "2 onions", "500 g chicken thighs", "1 tin coconut milk". As the screen says, they go on the week's grocery list.
- Tap Save. The meal appears on Monday with how many ingredients it has, like "Dinner · 6 ingredients".
Repeat for the rest of the week. Under the week's dates, a line counts what's planned so far, like "5 meals planned". Tap any meal to change it; Remove from the plan, at the bottom of that screen, takes it off.
To plan ahead, swipe sideways or use the arrows next to the dates to go to next week. This week brings you back.
One thing to know: the Meal plan keeps its own meals. It doesn't pull ingredients from recipes in the Recipes side of the app, so type each meal's shopping ingredients when you plan it.
Your grocery list builds itself
Once a meal is on the plan, a Grocery list bar sits at the bottom of the week, saying how many things are left to buy. Tap it.
- Every ingredient appears once. If two meals need onions, you get one line for onions with both amounts, like "2 + 1", and the meals that need it underneath. Amounts are listed as written, never added up, so a tin in one meal and 400 g in another shows as "1 tin + 400 g".
- It's sorted by aisle: Fruit & veg, Meat & fish, Dairy & eggs, Bakery, Cupboard, Frozen and Everything else. Recipe Cat guesses the aisle from the name. If it guesses wrong, touch and hold the item, choose Move to aisle and pick the right one. Your choice is kept for future weeks.
- Add things that aren't in a meal. Type in Add something else, like kitchen roll. These show Added by you, and you can swipe one away to remove it.
- Tick things off in the shop. Tap an item to tick it. The top shows your progress, like "8 of 21 in the basket". Untick all clears the ticks.
Change a meal on the plan and the list changes with it, since it's built from the week's meals.
Before you go, tick off what you already have in the cupboard. Then print the list with Leave out ticked items on, and only what you need to buy goes on the page.
Print it for the fridge
Tap the printer button next to the week's dates for Print and share:
- Fridge sheet: one landscape page with the days across and your meals down. Meal times you didn't plan are left off, so a dinners-only week gets one tall row.
- Grocery list: aisle by aisle, with a box to tick for each item. The grocery list's own printer button opens the same screen.
Pick Letter or A4, then tap Print, Share PDF or Share image to send it to someone doing the shop.
Next week: same as last week?
When you move to a week with nothing planned, and the week before had meals, Recipe Cat offers Same as last week. Tap it to copy last week's meals in. Each copy is separate, so changing one week never changes the other.
Want to keep the family recipes behind those meals, too? See how to save recipes on iPhone.
What it costs
The weekly plan, any number of meals and weeks, ingredients, the grocery list with aisles and ticks, Same as last week, and printing or sharing the fridge sheet and grocery list are free. There's no account and no ads. Printed pages carry a small "Recipe Cat" line at the foot.
Recipe Cat Pro is an optional one-time purchase, one purchase for every part of the app. For meal plans it adds My meals (meals you save with your own tags, put on a day in a single tap, with suggestions you haven't had in a while), the whole month on one page, and the plan or grocery list as a spreadsheet. Losing Pro never deletes anything. More on the Recipe Cat page.
Your plan and grocery list are kept on your iPhone or iPad. They leave only when you print or share them yourself.
Quick answers
How do I make a grocery list from a meal plan?
Write each meal's ingredients when you plan it. In Recipe Cat, the week's grocery list is built from those ingredients: each one once, sorted by aisle.
Can I plan just dinners?
Yes. Add only dinners, and the fridge sheet prints them in one row.
Can I share the list with someone doing the shop?
Yes. On the grocery list, tap the printer button, then Share PDF or Share image.
Can I repeat last week's meals?
Yes. On an empty week, tap Same as last week.
Try Recipe Cat
Try Recipe Cat: free, no ads, no sign-up → iyio.com/apps/recipe-cat