What's Cooking MCP Server

by whatscooking Your server? Claim it

answering

What's Cooking is answering right now. Last checked 12 min ago. It exposes 3 tools.

Ask Gusto what to cook tonight from what you have. One full dinner: recipe, steps, shopping list.

Uptime history 50 hours of history

50 hours agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

91 of 91 checks

Tools

read from the server

682 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check What's Cooking every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 12 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add whats-cooking --transport http https://whatscooking.guide/mcp-server

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address

https://whatscooking.guide/mcp-server

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.whats-cooking]
url = "https://whatscooking.guide/mcp-server"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "whats-cooking": {
      "url": "https://whatscooking.guide/mcp-server"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "whats-cooking": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://whatscooking.guide/mcp-server"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 3

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

browse

browse_explore

What recipes have people and Gusto shared on What's Cooking? Inputs (all optional): query (matched against titles, tags and ingredients), author (e.g. "Gusto"), limit (default 5, max 20). Returns short picks; call get_explore_recipe with an id for the full recipe. Example: {"query":"chicken","author":"Gusto"}

explore

get_explore_recipe

What's the full recipe for this Explore pick? Inputs: id (from browse_explore, required), servings (optional; quantities are scaled when it differs from the original). Example: {"id":"<id from browse_explore>","servings":4}

whats

whats_for_dinner

What should I cook tonight with what I have? Gusto, What's Cooking's chef, decides one complete dinner and returns the full recipe, steps, and a list of what to buy. Inputs (all optional): have (what is already in the kitchen, a list or a sentence), cuisine, servings (default 2, max 24), diet (hard constraints such as vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free), max_minutes, mood, skill. Salt, pepper, oil and water are assumed on hand. Call again with different inputs for another idea. Example: {"have":["chicken"],"cuisine":"Mexican"}

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://whatscooking.guide/mcp-server	streamable-http	answering	568 ms	12 min ago

Alternatives to What's Cooking

same job, measured the same way

Recipes Daily

by recipes-daily

Search recipes and cooking guides on recipes-daily.com, or find recipes from ingredients you have.

4 tools answering

The Pantry Butler

by thepantrybutler

Answers 'what can I cook tonight?' from your own saved recipes and what's really in your kitchen.

6 tools answering

FridgeToForks

by fridgetoforks

Real recipes you can cook from the food you already have, with exactly what is missing.

2 tools answering

Spoonjoy

by spoonjoy

Your personal recipe kitchen: save, fork, and cook recipes, build cookbooks, and shopping lists.

answering

Halite

by halite

Search, read, and edit your Halite recipe collection and shopping lists.

answering

Stemma

by stemma

Recipes, meal plan, shopping list and pantry from the Stemma iOS app, with per-area OAuth scopes.

answering

Plan To Eat

by alex-zwingli

Unofficial Plan to Eat client: recipes, meal planner, leftovers, freezer, and shopping list.

240 installs/wk local only

Cookidoo for Thermomix (unofficial)

by tobilektri

Thermomix recipes with guided cooking in Cookidoo, recipe search, week plan and shopping list

415 installs/wk local only

What's Cooking — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can What's Cooking do?

It exposes 3 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: browse_explore, get_explore_recipe, whats_for_dinner. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →

Is What's Cooking working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 682 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect What's Cooking?

Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.

Does What's Cooking need an API key?

No. What's Cooking completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 3 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is What's Cooking?

It answers our handshake in 682 ms on average, which is faster than 16% of all working MCP servers we measure. That is on the slow side — worth knowing if the tool sits inside an interactive loop. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.