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!

Pho style noodle soup compleyed

Completed... sigh 😒

I have major food envy weeds.

Me too - food envy

Casserole was still warm to touch so not put in freezer yet

Pop it in the fridge and freeze tomorrow Graphista it looked very tasty

Ok will do thanks

Don’t worry all, done some more research and garlic will NOT be fed to dogs!

Mince and onions somehow expanded to 2 big dishes, I cannibalised Jamie’s recipie for dumplings, they turned out a little yeasty and a little floury, but for a first ever attempt I’ll take it (Especially as I cocked up the flour!)

Weeds, Graphista, Nink, major food envy here as always, same for everyone who shares here. My food might not kill us hopefully but it’s certainly not photogenic 😂

Here is my Christmas chocolate log, from back when the world was normal.
I always try and use every scrap of food, but getting so many more ideas here.
We all should promise to keep this up when we venture out into real life again!

Fantastic thread

Just made a very quick soup for lunch as DH opened a can of coconut milk in error yesterday and we need to use it.
In pan -
Can of coconut milk
Dash of water
Spoonful of Thai curry paste
Spoonful of Peanut Butter
Whisk all together
Then add -
Sliced mushrooms if you have some. Or I guess most veggies or leftover chicken would work.
Taste and all more paste or peanut butter if you want.
It was just an experiment and it tastes wonderful.

*add - not all

That was very similar to my lunch yesterday paper. There was too much sauce with the Thai curry I made so saved some. I added chick peas and frozen sweet corn. There were a few new potatoes, chunks of pepper and spring onions from the curry hanging around in there. Really lovely.

place marking

What’s everyone eating today?
I’m thinking of a tagine for dinner to use up some sad looking root veg languishing in the fridge.

I'm planning to make bread pudding with loads of stale bread crusts. Never done it before but the recipe looks ok and I can't waste DS1's crusts! He likes the soft bit of the bread but nothing else...

I kind of made this yesterday. I used a random selection of vegetables from my fridge (carrots, courgettes, asaparagus) - I think you could use ordinary potatoes instead of sweet potatoes to bulk it out if you don't have them. I didn't have Thyme so went with oregano. It was lovely served with heated left over br ad from the day before (I have a bread maker). I'd definitely make it again to use up ageing vegetables.

realfood.tesco.com/recipes/chicken-and-sweet-potato-traybake.html

We’ve got leftover roast lamb to use today. I’ll slice it thinly and warm through gently in a little bit of veg stock with added herbs. I’m going to cook down the last of the baby plum tomatoes that need using, half a red chilli that needs using, some chopped courgette from the freezer, a yellow pepper that’s seen better days, some red onion and garlic, in some olive oil and ras el hanout. Make up some couscous with the stock from warming the lamb, add a spoonful of harissa, a good glug of extra virgin olive oil, some lemon juice and mix everything together.

I’m happy because we used the last of our open tub of breakfast yoghurt today. One less thing to keep track of. We have another tub, dated 29/3. It’s not opened yet so will still be fine. My DH will eat that for breakfast over the course of this week.

Lunch will be grain bread and liver pâté with pickled beetroot and crispy onion (no bacon left).

I love using leftovers! I am my mother's daughter....

Today I've picked the MN chicken from yesterday and put the bits in a celery soup with the stock. The rest of the meat I'll mix with some cubed boiled potatoes, and cover with stock and cream and bake (with maybe the leftover broccolli in too).

Some leftover banana sponge and custard and job's a good'un!

You can do savoury bread pudding type things too. Google strata recipes.

I often turn stale ends of bread into breadcrumbs and freeze them to use as toppings for things like pasta bake or coating for chicken/fish.

I had to sacrifice my bag of breadcrumbs to make space in the freezer.

Lunch today:

Liver pâté on grain bread, with crispy onions, pickled beetroot and the very last helping of chives from the fridge. 👍

Very filling, very rich and nutritious, too. We had a fresh orange each as well.

I boiled up the last of the very sprouted baby potatoes, so they will be good now for 4-5 days in the fridge. Checked on the King Edwards and they’re still fine so no urgent need to use.

Ok I really thought I had attached the photo this morning!

Anyway...

I’ve prepared the veg for roasting. Only had to discard one bit of the yellow pepper which was a little too far gone.

Also checked the veg drawers; found that the red pepper had to be purged a bit so I discarded one bit and chopped up the rest and froze with the last of the celery. There were two limes which would only have lasted a few more days, plus a whole newer bag more (we don’t have any gin atm so haven’t been having our g&t’s and we’re aiming to cut down on cocktails/long drinks anyway, nor have we had any Asian meals to use them with), so I froze the two older ones plus three of the newer ones - just chopped them into good sized wedges to be used for drinks or cooking later. Perfect timing as I took out the bag of courgette for dinner, so there was enough room to freeze one more lot.

This afternoon I mean...I’m obviously going slightly loopy. 😜

Frozen lemon/lime wedges are lovely in a glass of water.

Yes! A great substitute for ice cubes. Also adds a bit of zing to tonics/ginger ales.