How To Get Yourself to Cook More In 2026

No resolutions required.

Hello! Happy New Year! It’s been a wild and heavy end to a wild and heavy year, and I find myself craving levity and whimsy in 2026. I tend to find both of those things in the kitchen and while I find resolutions to be restrictive and suffocating, I’ve started making myself an annual cooking bingo last year that has 24 open slots for dishes i’d love to try and make this coming calendar year.

I like that it serves as both inspiration for when you find yourself in a cooking rut, and a form of motivation because it is fun to cross a box off the list. If I am being completely honest, I did not finish my cooking bingo from 2025, so I moved some of those dishes over to this year’s bingo board — and that is the best thing about this! There is no such thing as failing cooking bingo. It’s meant to be something that serves as a point of encouragement.

I put a range of dishes on here that i’ve always wanted to make from scratch and plan to host a number of petit and easy dinner parties that feature a dish or two as further excuse and motivation to actually make some of these dishes.

This is what my cooking bingo for 2026 looks like:

And if you are interested in filling out your own, I have a blank template here that you can download (for free), fill out, and hang on your own fridge.

The first thing I cooked this year was a pan of buttery mushroom fried rice to use up some lingering mushrooms (oyster, portabello, beech), onions, and white rice before I proceed with the deep fridge clean out I plan on doing. (I also forgot just how delicious a pat of butter can make a pan of fried rice.) But I think egg and chive dumplings or a sheet pan pancake might make an appearance in my kitchen by the end of the week!

Let me know what you would put on your cooking bingo in the comments below!