Why use this wheel
Built for the nightly stalemate
Nobody minds enough to choose but everybody minds enough to veto. The wheel breaks it without anyone having to commit first.
Keep your real list
Replace the presets with what you actually eat. It's saved in your browser, so next week's argument is already set up.
Weight the favourites
Give the reliable options bigger slices and leave the ambitious ones small. Chance, but honest about your habits.
Lists worth putting on the wheel
The wheel is the easy part. What actually ends the argument is a list somebody already thought about, so here are four, split by how much effort you have left tonight. Load one, delete what your household won't eat, and the wheel does the rest.
Weeknight, under 30 minutes
Things that go from a cold kitchen to a plate inside half an hour without a shopping trip.
- Pasta with whatever sauce is open
- Fried rice
- Omelette and salad
- Grilled cheese and soup
- Sausages and roast veg
- Noodle stir fry
- Baked potatoes
- Quesadillas
- Shakshuka
- Pesto gnocchi
- Tuna pasta bake
- Chicken wraps
- Fish fingers and peas
- Instant ramen, upgraded
Ordering in, by cuisine
Cuisine rather than restaurant, so the wheel picks the argument and the app picks the shop.
- Pizza
- Chinese
- Indian
- Thai
- Sushi
- Burgers
- Fried chicken
- Kebab
- Mexican
- Vietnamese
- Greek
- Fish and chips
Whatever is actually in the fridge
For the night the shop did not happen. Every one of these is mostly cupboard.
- Beans on toast
- Fridge-bottom soup
- Egg fried rice
- Pasta aglio e olio
- Cheese and crackers dinner
- Leftovers reheated
- Toastie and crisps
- Tinned tomato pasta
- Rice and a fried egg
- Freezer roulette
Cooking for six or more
One pot, one oven tray, or one thing everyone assembles themselves.
- Chilli and rice
- Lasagne
- Roast chicken
- Curry and naan
- Traybake sausages
- Taco bar
- Baked pasta
- Pulled pork rolls
- Big salad and bread
- Paella
Why nobody can answer this question
"What do you want to eat?" is one of the hardest questions in a household, and the reason is not indecision. It is that nobody wants to be the person who chose. Naming a preference means owning the outcome, and if the food turns out disappointing or someone else was quietly hoping for something different, that is on you. So everyone says they don't mind, everyone means it, and twenty minutes disappear.
The wheel resolves it by removing authorship. The decision still gets made, and made quickly, but nobody picked it — so nobody is answerable for it. This is the same mechanism that makes random selection work in classrooms and giveaways, applied to the most frequently repeated decision most people make.
It also breaks the veto loop. In a normal negotiation each suggestion can be rejected, which means the person suggesting takes all the risk. On a wheel, the options go up first and the choice happens afterwards, so vetoing is something you do while building the list rather than something you do to another person's idea.
Build the list once, use it forever
The preset is a starting point, not the point. The version that actually saves you time is the one holding the eight or ten things your household genuinely eats — including the specific takeaway you always order from and the thing one person makes when nobody can face cooking.
That list is saved in your browser as you build it, so the setup cost is paid once. Open the page next Tuesday and your real options are already loaded. It is worth spending five minutes getting it right, because a wheel full of generic categories produces generic answers and you will stop using it.
If different people in the house use different devices, generate a share link once and everyone bookmarks it. Opening the link loads and saves the same list on their machine.
Weighting, and knowing when to overrule
An even wheel says everything is equally likely, which is rarely true of how people eat. Weight the reliable options up and the ambitious ones down — pasta at 5 and the recipe you keep meaning to try at 1 — and the wheel reflects your actual habits while still leaving room for the occasional surprise.
And if it lands on something and you immediately want to spin again, that is information rather than failure. You wanted the other thing. The wheel got you there in three seconds instead of twenty minutes, which was the job.
How to use the what to eat wheel
- 01
Load your real options
Replace the presets with what you actually eat, including takeaways.
- 02
Weight them honestly
Reliable favourites get bigger slices than aspirational recipes.
- 03
Spin and commit
Or notice you want to re-spin, which tells you what you were hoping for.
Frequently asked questions
Can I add my own meals instead of the presets?
Yes, and you should — a wheel holding your actual options is far more useful than generic categories. Your list is saved in the browser, so you only build it once.
Can the whole household use the same wheel?
Yes. Generate a share link and everyone bookmarks it. Opening the link loads that exact list on their device and saves it there.
What if it picks something we can't actually make tonight?
Remove it before spinning rather than after. The wheel is most useful when the list only contains things that are genuinely available right now.
How many food options work best?
Six to twelve. Fewer and you already knew the answer; many more and the wheel starts suggesting things nobody was really considering.
Can I split the wheel between cooking and ordering in?
That is usually the version that works. Put three or four things you can actually cook tonight next to two takeaway options and let the wheel arbitrate between effort and convenience, rather than deciding that question separately first.
How do we stop the same three meals coming up every week?
Switch to Battle Duel for the week: each meal is removed as it is drawn, so seven spins give you seven different dinners and a rota you did not have to write.