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!

My spelling is shit . Getting used to a new laptop with different sized keys.

Thank you for the Ritz recommendations. All those sweet ideas were a revelation although as you suggest I think using them as a crumb is a smart way to go!

Virtual frugal foodie soirée sounds fab!

Dinner was delicious as expected!

We usually make this with a mix of as many different types of mushrooms as we can find but this time we just bought a big pack of ‘wonky mushrooms’ (all one type) as that was all that was left when we did our last shop. It was still just as tasty. The creme fraiche was due to be used on 6/3 but hadn’t been opened yet and looked okay so we tasted it and it was fine, so we used that instead of the newer tub.

Some of the mushrooms at the bottom of the pack were a little worse for wear so I’m glad we had this meal on the plan for today; they probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer...I saved four big mushrooms that still looked pretty good to use for a pork goulash later in the week (probably on Thursday).

I finally got around to making the banana loaf. I took the sugar down by 25g to stretch it. It will still be plenty sweet. A little disappointed that I must have done something wrong on temp or timing as it’s a little well done...but it’ll do! So easy - it’s five minutes work, then pop it into the oven, and you’ll never have to bin a banana again!

So much talk of lentils... I'm allergic to the bloody things, along with practically every other meat substitute you can think of! Makes things a bit harder for us.

Any idea what I can do with a quarter of a tub of watermelon that ended on the 19th? I would freeze it but I wouldn't know what to do with it afterwards (no blender, so can't make a smoothie).

Oh no @sockittome123 that sucks!

I’d probably freeze it for now and figure out what to do with it later. It’ll go a bit mushy so my suggestion was going to be make a smoothie or a drink but that option’s out... or you could make a salad tomorrow to use it up.

First salad on google results is this one:

www.dinneratthezoo.com/watermelon-salad/

Maybe if you mash it with a potato masher or fork before freezing it might turn out a bit like granita?

I cooked lentils last night for the first time ever. I usually buy the pouches cos I’m lazy. Literally as easy as cooking pasta, and I’m not going to waste my money on the cooked ones anymore. I mixed them with halloumi, watercress and pancetta, absolutely delicious.

Keep your parmesan rind and pop it in your slow cooker minestrone

Lentils are great for filling out dishes. My food hack is to half and half... shepherds /cottage pie with half mince half lentils, same for lasagne and spag Bol, curries.

Last nights left overs meal was burritos with left over chick peas, tomatoes, beans, a quarter mince, lentils, chilli powder peppers etc, throw it all in a pan and add the cheese at the end to melt then into a wrap with guacamole and creams freche. Wraps last longer than brea, can be frozen and can be used for lots even as replacement fur pasta in lasagne and cannelloni.

The rest if the ingredients went into lasagne for later this week.

Left over cheeses also make a great cheese sauce for fish and you can use long life milk and a bit corn flour.

In fact use long life milk for all cooking and save the fresh stuff for tea and cereals.

@sockittome123 invest in some butternut squash, you can buy it chopped and frozen now and throw it in the oven. But my favourite is to use it for curry with chickpeas and peas (or again most beefy overs work - butter beans are a great curry filler) can do half sweet potatoes. Creme Freche or yogurt, your preferred curry powder, turmeric, coriander, chilli flakes, spoonful of brown sugar. god it's delicious as it soaked all the flavours up. Comes out sweet like a korma or tikka. I cook to taste and just add bits as I go.

You can even make little chipatis too - dead easy.

The standard leftover recipe in our house is fritters:

Make a batter out of one egg (I've done this without egg before, it's doable but not good), some flour, start with half a cup, salt and water. If you have a sodastream, soda water will make the batter lighter and a pinch of baking powder will help too though I don't normally bother. This is a very forgiving recipe so you don't have to be exact with the measurements, you are looking initially for the consistency of thick cream. Throw into it your leftovers and drop spoonfulls into a hot pan with a little oil. Turn once the mixture seems more or less set and brown both sides.
A word of warning, the batter will make flavours a bit duller. This is why it is our standby if we've had a takeaway curry that blows our mouths off, but you have to take this into account when deciding what to put in. Add spice!.
Fillings we have used before are:
Leftover curry
A tin of sweetcorn with a pinch of curry powder
Leftover cheese (watch the cooking temp with this one)
Grated courgette
Manky veg of all stripes, diced small
leftover rice and curry sauce
Onion

Savoury muffins are a good way of using up small bits of veg, cheese and minced meat. Broccoli stem and cheese works well.

For old aubergines. Affectionately known as "mush" in our household, cook an aubergine or two whole in an oven for 20 minutes to half an hour. Fry some onion and garlic until soft, add some spice to taste, cumin, coriander and chili are my normal combination. Fish the aubergine out of the oven and peel away the skins from the now cooked flesh. Chop it up and add to the pan with the onions. Now add any soft tomatoes you have or some tomato paste and water. Cook down for a bit then finish off with a splash of red wine or balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. We had that for dinner Monday with home made flat breads.

Last nights dinner was made up of slightly out of date/ going squidgy mushrooms, which I sliced and cooked in butter and chopped garlic. Stirred in some soft cheese (would normally use dolcellate or similar) and load of black pepper. Had half a dried up block of Parmesan so grated that and chucked that in too. Cooked some pasta and mixed it all through- served with salad and garlic bread.

If DH /kids had seen the mushrooms and cheese, before I'd started cooking I am sure there would have been comments, but they wolfed it down.

I'm doing the mushroom stroganoff tonight :) and then I have 2 courgettes that are looking a bit sad (plus 2 freshly delivered yesterday as they are my favourite veg) so planning on making some cheesy courgette fritters tomorrow!

Bacon, Potatoes & Onions - a cheap, easy Northern dish.
Alternate layers of sliced potatoes, sliced onions and rashers of bacon. Season layers as you go. I also dot every third layer with butter. Add stock (chicken or veg).
The final layer is sliced potato dotted with butter.
Put in the oven for a couple of hours until potatoes are tender and top layer is brown and crispy. Serve with red cabbage or pickles.

I got some bargain onion bhajis so I think tonight will be curry night. Going to try your daal ninkanink.

Maybe if you mash it with a potato masher or fork before freezing it might turn out a bit like granita?
Since it's mostly water, I'd freeze it first; then when it thaws out it'll be quite mushy and easier to mash.

Ooh or a watermelon sorbet?

Some good ideas here, thank you!

I offer you Mary Berry's bacon rosti - three ingredients (four if you want eggs with it) that you've probably already got in the pantry!

Someone upthread mentioned flavoured gin - this is surprisingly nice mixed into jelly (for an adult dessert). Just make up the jelly as normal but add a couple of shots of the gin. You can jazz it up even more by adding tinned/frozen/fresh fruit, stale cake, serve with custard or ice cream.

That was probably me, with the vile ginger and rhubarb gin. I’ve had great ones but this one tastes like artificial sweeties, really cloying and sickly sweet. I have considered making jelly with it, I might save that for summer and maybe mix it with Prosecco to water down the awfulness in the finished jelly...

I made myself a protein smoothie this morning:

1 scoop powder
1 banana
25g apricots
Poppy seeds
1 tbsp honey
About 50ml milk
100ml water

Really filling, bit sweeter than my normal breakfast though!

I've got mini egg muffins too:

Courgette, spinach (just a handful of each, cooked)
Bacon bits, chorizo, or ham (about 1 slice of bacon's worth)
2x eggs
1tbsp cream
1tbsp flour
100ml milk
100g grated cheese

Just mix it all together, dole out into 6 slot muffin tray, cook for 20m at 180. Makes another bitesize snack that fills a gap between meals.

Today we had a small portion of the leftover dahl, with one chapati each. Very filling and plenty of nutrients.

We are down to our last couple of slices of our usual malted loaf for breakfast/lunches. We’ll have toast tomorrow for lunch (it’s not fresh enough to eat without toasting) to use it up, then save the two ends to dry out for making bread crumbs or croutons. We do have a small white toastie loaf in the fridge (it’s dated today so I put it in the fridge a few days ago to preserve it for a bit longer), which will do for this week and next.

Tonight we’re deboning the lamb leg we bought on our last shop (the only fresh meat they had; actually they had venison as well so we bought a packet of that to make a stew) and dividing it up to make hopefully six fairly generous meals, again hopefully getting leftovers from at least some of those meals to stretch it further (don’t have room to freeze much of it). This should easily see us through this week and next.

Inspired by this thread, I've cooked a few meals this afternoon with the sad looking veg left in my fridge... hoping to freeze a few in case we're struck by the lurgy and I have no energy to cook!

Thank you for all the great tips and recipe ideas

Anyone have any ideas for using up loads of carrots and celery? I've already made a minestrone soup and still have plenty left!

Glad the thread is helping you!

If you have room in the freezer I’d reserve half of each to keep fresh, and then chop up the rest into fairly small pieces and freeze in a bag together to use for mirepoix in future. If you have a load of onions and aren’t sure if you’ll get through them all you can could chop up one or two of those and add it to the mix as well.

We make a really simple celery and leek gratin which is a very nice accompaniment to beef, pork or chicken (anything really).