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

[Ninkanink]

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!

For the broadbeans, I would make a risotto or mash up and use as a topping for bruschetta.

Pasta bake is another you-can-add-almost-anything-to-it meal. Particularly good for cheese, though. I just boil the pasta soft, add either pesto, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree or a pre-made pasta sauce plus whatever meat, cheese or veg I have to use up, then bake it in an oven dish for about half an hour at 180 fan (I cook everything at 180 fan unless I'm following an actual recipe that says otherwise! )

One way I avoid waste is by writing down all the perishables and their Use by dates on my meal plan. That way if I change plans I can make sure I still use things up in time.

Case in point on avoiding waste of food - I had originally planned to use some chorizo in that pasta dish, but looking at it again and considering our circumstances with practising strict social distancing and not going shopping at all for 2 or hopefully 3 weeks, I decided it wasn’t necessary and that I’d rather not open the packet until I had to. So I added some smoked paprika instead to achieve a similar finish to the dish. Similarly, I used the leftover 2-3 tablespoons of ranch dressing for the nacho meal instead of using sour cream. That leaves us half a tub of sour cream to use for something else. This is how we routinely approach it.

What are you going to do with your sour cream Nink? I’m about to use half a tub and can’t think what to do with the rest.

I’ll use it for jacket potatoes tomorrow -

Cook jacket potatoes as preferred (I microwave first, then brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and cook in the oven until crispy) once ready cut in half and scoop out the flesh, add thinly sliced spring onion, sour cream, plenty of salt and pepper, and mash together well and dollop it back into the potato skins. Garnish with chives if you have it.

We’re having it with steak tomorrow but it’s good as an accompaniment to all sorts of meats. You could also make it a standalone meal by adding some fried bacon to the mix and topping with cheese for a bit more protein.

Fromage frais also freezes, so chuck it in the freezer if it's approaching use by date.

I also have half a tub of creme fraiche that really needs using! Any ideas?

Off to raid the fridge in a min and rework the meal plan so it uses everything up. In time!

@bluechameleon good idea. I bought food labels and mark all leftovers clearly too, so there's no forgetting how long it's been in fridge

If you have a good amount of mushrooms (or can get some) we love this mushroom stroganoff - meatless, but you really won’t miss it - very rich and filling:

www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/mushroom-recipes/mushroom-stroganoff/

You’re awesome @Ninkanink thank you! I’ll be back in a few days with my leftover bits and pieces asking for more help. 😂

Sorry that was in reply to @cricketmum84

We had veggie sausage pasta today. I made a bit much of the ratatouille type sauce so that’s going to become a shakshuka type dish with an egg baked on top of it.

I’m being much more strict on how much we’re eating. Normally we’d have had the whole thing but now there’s one less lunch to think about

Risotto is a great idea for those broad beans. Thought I'd also mention how well they go with bacon or cured ham (like prosciutto).

Still not sure exactly what I'm supposed to do with this seaweed. And I don't know the right term to Google. It might have to get its own thread at this rate

Broad beans are excellent to make falafel out of too.

Good plan @Ninkanink! I'm veggie so don't miss the meat anyway. AND I have mushrooms to use up!! Do you know if you can freeze it?

My fallback staple is lentil and bacon soup. Packets of cooking bacon from any supermarket, dirt cheap and keeps for ages. Big bags of lentils and huge tubs of tomato puree from Asian wholesalers. Onions and stock/bouillion. Can add curry/chilli powder/herbs if you want.

Chop up the bacon (I remove all the fat and give it to the cats, but you don't have to) and several onions

Fry in a bit of oil until the bacon is cooked and the onions soft

Add several pints of water

Add several cups of lentils (I'm vague on quantities because I don't measure and it depends how much soup you want! I use red split, brown and moong daal lentils. You can chuck tinned adzuki and black beans in as well if you like it extra filling

Cook until the lentils are soft and starting to break up

Then add a few tbsps of stock/bouillon (I use big tubs of stock paste or Marigold powder), a tbsp of garlic paste (also available in big tubs at Asian supermarkets) and a good dollop of tomato puree. DON'T add the stock earlier or it will stop the lentils from cooking properly

Simmer for another half hour and keep stirring quite vigorously every few minutes.

Delicious, freezes well and you can make a LOT of it quite cheaply.

@LimpidPools

I’d suggest watching a few Korean, Japanese or Chinese cooking vlogs on YouTube. Turn on the English subtitles to help. You’ll get lots of ideas which you can improvise from.

I’d probably make a broth, adding the seaweed to it, and have it over rice or noodles. Serve topped with a soft boiled egg (cut in half) and garnish with sliced spring onion and red chilli.

Or just make up a packet of spicy noodles if you have some, add the seaweed to that and proceed as above.

Thanks, good thoughts. I'm really just not sure how I'm supposed to prepare it. It's not nori, so I'm not sure if it needs soaking or precooking or anything.

Thanks everyone, I didn't even think of combining all the different cheeses to make macaroni cheese. I just need to make sure we have enough pasta, I only have a couple of packets and between the 4 of us we can easily eat 400g of pasta. I've cut down our portion sizes so we'll eat 300g between us from now on.

@Fivefourthree I have just made your soup for lunch - onion, 2 bendy carrots, celery, a random half kohlrabi, three elderly sprouting potatoes (I broke the sprouts off!), a handful of frozen roast lamb from a dinner party a month ago, stock, bay leaf. It's cooking up now!

Yummly is the app RedRedRed was talking about.

sorry RedRed9 , got your username wrong!

turkeyontheplate

I'll try that soup of yours - I luffs lentil soup, and have a bit of leftover bacon . . .

As the Law of the Sod would have it, I had totally run down the contents of my freezer so that I could defrost it (it really was pretty bad- more ice in there than currently in the Arctic) so was very badly off for fleshy protein, but did have what I can only describe as a "lump" of bacon (my butcher sells offcuts) about the size of my two fists. I boiled it for broth (delicious!) using half in the broth itself. I added the other half to a very garlicky white sauce with an onion and half a pack of mushrooms to make a jacket potato filling (also delicious - God, I'm good ).

I got another "lump" yesterday and plan to try your lentil soup with it.

@LimpidPools try one of the translation apps - you can rest your phone camera on it as if to take a photo and it will translate the written instructions

Currently making scotch pancakes with some self raising flour that goes out of date at the end of the month.