What Should I Eat for Dinner Tonight? A Tired-Brain Guide

Someone asks what's for dinner at 6:15, and your mind goes blank. You've been at work, or at home with the kids, or both. You like food. You just don't have one more decision left in you today.

So settle one thing first, keep a few lazy dinners ready, and let the rest go.

What should I decide first when I don't know what to eat for dinner?

Decide how much you have left in you before you decide what to eat. Maybe it's enough to cook, enough to answer the door for a delivery, or enough to leave the house. Each of those has its own shortlist, so settling it first makes most of tonight's options disappear.

A quick way to settle it:

• Cook if you have the energy to stand at the stove and something in the fridge you'd like to use up.
• Order in if you want to stay in and can't face the dishes.
• Go out if you need to leave the house, or you're eating with someone and want it to feel like an occasion.

Take that 6:15 moment. You have enough in you to answer the door, not to stand at a stove, and the last two dinners were pasta. So it's delivery, and something brothy: a hot and sour soup. One honest look at your energy and one look back at what you've eaten, and dinner is picked.

Be honest about energy here. Planning to cook and giving up at 8 p.m. is how you end up with a worse delivery order, or a bowl of cereal, an hour later than you wanted. For lunch or any other meal, the three-question daytime guide works the same way.

What is a good lazy dinner if I'm cooking tonight?

A good lazy dinner is one you cook without a recipe or much thought. Frozen dumplings, buttered pasta with peas, a quesadilla, leftovers turned into fried rice. Lazy dinners work because you pick them in advance, so tonight you only choose one.

The trick is to choose your lazy dinners on a good day, not tonight. Write down three you actually like and keep the few things they need in the house. For example:

• Frozen dumplings, boiled or pan-fried, with soy sauce and vinegar to dip.
• Buttered pasta with a handful of frozen peas and plenty of cheese.
• A quesadilla with whatever cheese and leftovers are in the fridge.

None of these is exciting. You're allowed to eat the same one twice in a week.

Not cooking tonight? Today's Mealow asks six questions and picks 3 dishes from real places near you, each with a one-line reason.

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What should I eat for dinner tonight if I'm getting takeout?

For takeout tonight, order food that travels well: rice dishes, curries, noodle soups with the broth packed separately, burritos and pizza. Leave battered and deep-fried food for nights you eat out, since it goes soft in the box.

Ordering from the same few places makes delivery nights easy. Keep a note of the dish you liked at each one, so reordering takes no thought. When you want something new, change one thing: same place, different dish, or same dish, different place. That gets you variety without a fresh round of scrolling.

What should I eat for dinner tonight if I'm going out?

When you're going out for dinner tonight, pick somewhere close enough that getting there isn't another chore, and check it's open before you get attached. If two places are equally close, go to the one where you'd order without looking at the menu.

Once you're there, order the thing you'd never bother making at home: something straight off a grill, something battered and hot, or a dish with a lot of parts. That's what a night out is good for.

What should I have for dinner when I'm tired of everything?

When every dinner sounds boring, try a different texture, temperature or flavor before you go hunting for a new cuisine. Something brothy, crunchy, cold or spicy can make the usual foods sound good again.

Look back at your last few dinners. If they were all heavy, or all bread, pick the opposite:

• Lots of bread and cheese lately? Go for a brothy soup or a bowl of rice and vegetables.
• Lots of soft, saucy food? Something crisp, ideally eaten at the table: a salad with crunch, grilled skewers, tacos.
• Everything tastes flat? Something sour or spicy: a hot and sour soup, a curry, pickles on the side.
• Eaten out all week? A plain lazy dinner at home.

If nothing sounds good, pick the plainest lazy dinner on your list. If you've had no appetite for days, ask a doctor.

What should I eat if it's a late dinner?

Keep a late dinner smaller and simpler than a normal one: half a portion of a lazy dinner, or toast. A late meal you can finish quickly beats a big order that arrives when you'd rather be winding down.

Late dinners also have fewer options, which helps. If the delivery wait is longer than it takes to boil a pan of dumplings, boil the dumplings.

How do we stop arguing about who picks dinner?

Take turns picking dinner. Whoever picks tonight doesn't clean up, and tomorrow the other person picks. A fixed rotation turns "I don't mind, what do you want?" into an actual answer, because everyone knows whose night it is before anyone gets hungry.

It sounds silly, but the clean-up trade makes picking feel like a perk. The decider can still check for anything someone really won't eat, in one quick question. For families, let a kid pick between two options you're already happy with, so the rotation includes them without risking a dinner nobody likes.

When nobody can agree, hand it to something neutral: a coin, a dinner wheel, a random food generator, or one of the other free food pickers. Whoever's night it is does the spin, and the result stands.

Free in your browser, nothing to install. English or Chinese, and there's a WeChat Mini Program too.

Pick my dinner now

What if it's 7 p.m. and I still haven't picked dinner?

If it's 7 p.m. and dinner still isn't picked, go with whatever you were leaning toward. Dinner at 7:30 that's fine beats a better one at 9. Then set a cut-off for tomorrow, like 6:30, so the choice has a deadline.

If you'd rather not be the one deciding at all, hand it to Today's Mealow. A little cat asks six quick questions: what kind of cuisine, which meal, how you're feeling, what flavor you want, who you're with and where, and what you don't eat. Then it picks three dishes from real restaurants near you, each with a one-line reason. Not feeling any of them? Tap "Show me others" for another three.