Food thread! Favourite leftover dishes, avoiding waste, menu ideas.

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Thought I’d start a thread for everyone to post their tips and ideas on how best to use foodstuffs. Hoping it could be an easy guide as well for those who maybe aren’t so used to home cooking or using leftover foods, or understanding how best to utilise everything you have, expiry dates etc.

We have always been very conscious of food waste so we plan very carefully to use every scrap of food, it’s not hard, it’s just a skill one develops.

I’ll post some of my favourite leftover/using up bits meals and menus here and if anyone else wants to as well, please do!

@zillerdy @OnceUponAMidnightBeery made white/bechamel sauce with double cream today. Delicious and very easy. Warm cream on low, add 1 tablespoon of. cornflour or plain flour mixed with a little water to hot cream, stir until thick. Add more flour/water mix if you have more cream than a medium tub.
I used to make a keto cheese sauce when I was doing Atkins; Literally just melting grated cheese into cream. Gorgeous! I still do it sometimes if I'm a)in a hurry or b) only want a small amount.

I found a Jamie Oliver recipe for Chicken and butter bean curry which made use of some frozen chicken thighs in the freezer. Not too many ingredients and it was nice.

Has anyone mentioned the app "Supercook" yet? You put in what ingredients you have and it suggests recipes. It's US based so some recipes are a bit strange lol but I'm finding it pretty interesting so far!

Just thought of apple scrap vinegar. I make it in the autumn when I'm dealing with the apple glut.
Basically add apple peel and cores to water and keep submerged. Cover top of your jar / bowl with a cloth and elastic band and leave to get on with it.

Also, in the unlikely event anyone has excess avocado, you can mash with lemon juice and freeze - stays green
I remembered some I froze from a bag of Morrisons wonky avocado's a month or two ago, so we had pah breakfast today!

OnceUponAMidnightBeery I will trade you some raisins for toilet roll and Disney soap!( I finally braved tes co to get my prescriptions and food and forgot to get some.... couldn't get my prescriptions either.) In case people think I was a toilet roll stock piler.... I tend to buy on offer and having grown up in similar circumstance to MidnightBeery by the sounds of it I always make sure I have plenty of basics in normally, as remember going without so much as a child I won't do it to my son... I also think my childhood food poverty is linked to my obesity now as famine or feast mentality and done nothing but feast for the last "ahem" years....

Sorry mistaken Midnight beery background with Graphista

I have planned the next week down to the day...though I know it will all go out the window at some point. We already ate two planned meals in one yesterday for lunch as I didn't anticipate how much DH at the kids eat for lunch!! Usually I am at work having some sushi or a cup of soup from Pret al desko so I didn't realise they're all used to having a full hot meal every day for lunch as well as dinner ("and we always have pudding mummy"...er, go on then, there's the oven...)

However you would all be pleased with my thrifty soup, I reused the shallots, cream and wine from the bottom of the moules mariniere pot and made bacon, sweetcorn and potato chowder.

Today's meals: Breakfast porridge (to use up two over-ripe pears), Lunch tomato tart and something (salad?), Dinner lamb/lentil/squash hotpot with roast PSB.

Can you make mini-quiches in a muffin tin without shortcrust? I have all the bits for the fillings but don't have enough flour to make shortcrust.

We make some curries with ground almonds. It makes the sauce lovely and unctuous and thick.

You can also bake with it. This recipe caught my eye (if you don’t have oranges you can probably substitute):

www.recipesmadeeasy.co.uk/orange-almond-shortbread/

www.sainsburysmagazine.co.uk/recipes/cookies-and-biscuits/soft-lemon-and-almond-cookies

www.nigella.com/recipes/apple-and-almond-cake

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/oct/17/foodanddrink.shopping

www.samtanskitchen.com/blogs/recipes/low-carb-almond-pancakes-gluten-free

Have you got bread? You can squash some bread down into the mould. Or if you have streaky bacon you could lay those out to form a mould.

www.oliviascuisine.com/castagnaccio-pugliese/
www.google.com/amp/s/www.greatitalianchefs.com/features/chestnut-flour-tuscany-dishes/amp

Chestnut flour recipes

@Furble have you got ingredients in to make banana pancakes? I love them with streaky bacon, so you’ve got two main components right there.

Can you make mini-quiches in a muffin tin without shortcrust?
Yes! Just grease the tin really well and they come out like mini omelette muffins. You can freeze them too.

Or you can line the tin with grease proof paper or muffin cases.

I have one pack of chicken in the freezer, peanut butter, noodles. Thinking of satay chicken. No soy sauce though. Can I wing it and just marinate the chicken in peanut butter and a bit of oil? I have onions and garlic actually.

Haha I’m such a numpty sometimes - I thought you were specifically asking for some kind of crust...if you’re happy to have it crustless then I’d just do as @PurpleDaisies said.

Do you have fish sauce, Worcester sauce, teriyaki - anything like that would make a good substitute Bluewaves

I like the idea of a bread crust for a quiche/pie though. I might try that for using stale bread.

Do you think it's possible to make a mushroom pate with yoghurt instead of cream??

I don't see why not, would just have a sharper flavour.

@LimpidPools try nigellas marmite pasta with Vegemite substitute
You can also use as sub in soy sauce recipes and if mixed melted butter toss with fresh made popcorn and pop in o en few minutes to recrisp it as popcorn will soften

@bluecrashing any ginger(fresh can be frozen and grated in from frozen,easier to peel with spoon then too.dry ginger will work) or marmite/Vegemite?I'd go easy on adding oil with nut butter as already quite fatty

I'm trying to find something interesting to do with leftover Bolognese.

Add beans and turn it into a chilli?

Just had mix up pie for lunch - chopped up leftovers, chicken, potatoes, sweet potato, spinach, onion, mixed in some milk, mustard and a bit of cheese. Used that as pie filling, using ready made pastry. Heated the pie filling to tepid in the microwave before putting in the oven. Everyone loved it.