When you have multiple Sims who need to eat at the same time, you can Open the refrigerator and drag a meal to the table or counter, to make it easier. Just remember to put the meal back in the fridge afterwards. That way, you only have to go through the refrigerator menu once.
My Sims are doing this, and I DO NOT have Home Chef Hustle. I only have everything up until Cottage Living, but I am patched to the most recent patch. I have a few meals they cooked in the fridge, but when I select "Get Leftovers" they select ingredients like Cheese or Milk instead. They don't select vegetables/produce, though.
This is happening autonomously in my game; I recently held a wedding in my Sims' house and they had a lot of prepped ingredients in the fridge (batter, dough, prepped veggies, cookie dough) and the NPC guests all kept helping themselves to these ingredients despite there being complete meals in there. I don't know if it's by design but it was quite irritating as I had to prep all the ingredients again!
