I have never really enjoyed cooking. I love eating, but cooking takes a lot of time and planning, a brief time of enjoyment, and then it’s time to clean up. During Covid, when most of the restaurants were closed, I cooked most of the time, but now that eating out is more convenient (and often cheaper) and good for building connections, I tend to eat out more.

Even during Covid when I was cooking, I would almost never cook Chinese food. I tried a couple of times, but it wasn’t as good as eating the same food at the little shop across the street, so I gave up.

On Christmas, I made fajitas for my friends, and since I ordered the vegetables online, there were some leftover veggies afterwards. Since I didn’t really feel like having fajitas again, I asked DeepSeek, the Chinese AI, to give me two Chinese recipes using only the ingredients in my kitchen. The first two recipes combined all of the ingredients in both dishes. I tried again, telling it that I didn’t need to put everything in both dishes. The resulting recipes seemed pretty good, so I made them.

I was surprised by how good they tasted. I modified them a bit based on things I had seen when my friends cook Chinese food, but basically, I followed the recipes pretty closely. I also added limes because I had leftovers, and I love lime flavors. So the dishes weren’t completely Chinese (番茄炒蛋, fanqie chao dan, fried egg and tomato—with lime and cilantro is amazing, by the way), but they were pretty close.

A few days later, I made pasta sauce, and I also had leftover veggies. I got two more recipes from DeepSeek, and that time, I invited my neighbor over for lunch. I warned her that I had no idea if the food would taste good, but she assured me it was great. She said that it was a Chinese taste, so she wasn’t sure I would like it, but she liked it and was used to it. I assumed that was good news since I was aiming for Chinese flavors.

Last night, I finished up the mushrooms with an omelet. I also added lime and cilantro, and ooooh, that was great!

Thankfully, I have not yet been poisoned by AI-generated recipes. I guess that’s a good thing.

So I’m wondering how ethical it is to use DeepSeek for cooking. My friend is an artist, and she has very strong feelings about AI-generated art. Many AIs get their material in underhanded or unethical ways from artists who are struggling to make a career by selling their art. So by using AI recipes, am I hurting the bloggers who are struggling to make money by blogging about their recipes, recipes that AI is using and adapting?

Before I used AI, I tried to use the internet for my cooking journey. I found some good recipes, and AllRecipes often proved to be an excellent resource. But my biggest problem with Western Food is that I don’t keep my kitchen stocked with milk or butter or heavy whipping cream or many of the things that lots of those recipes I found called for.

By the time I made cream of mushroom soup from scratch or figured out how to adjust the recipe for my limited resources, the “quick” meal took several hours.

Chinese recipes had a different problem—trying to find and read them. I knew there were videos, but if I’m going to make a recipe, I would much rather see the directions rather than have to watch a video and then remember how to make it. And I had a hard time getting motivated to find a good resource for Chinese recipes that I could follow.

But using DeepSeek solved the problem of giving me recipes for things I didn’t have, and it made Chinese recipes much more accessible. I’m not going to share these recipes because I think that’s starting to push the line, but I am very thankful that I can use them and finally make some of the Chinese dishes that I love to eat.

What are your thoughts about using AI in cooking?