Cooking with stuff you'd normally throw away

[Sexisthairdressers]

Hi all
I wonder if anyone has any interesting ideas for using up food stuff we'd normally throw away? For example, I have a recipe for banana skin curry.
Thanks everyone :-)

I once read you could put onion skins in French onion soup but it was awful!! I don’t know if I left them in too long (it was more for flavour than to eat them). There’s also a recipe for potato peelings where you drizzle with oil, bake them and add red peppers and onions plus salt and pepper Chinese seasoning or load them up like dirty fries with cheese etc.

Add parmesan rind to soup or tomato sauce to add depth of flavour.

Watermelon rind jam: Watermelon Rind Jam - Savoring Italy

I'd like to get a wartime cookbook because I'm sure there are FAR more things we could all make use of- vegetable peelings, off cuts etc. I do re-grow veg tops- spring onions, bok choy, celery etc all gets put into a gardening trough. Some things re-grow and I can use the leaves, some don't or get picked out by birds.

I’d love the banana skin curry recipe please!

The potato peelings idea sounds great! Will try that :-)

Thanks - great idea!

I'd love a book like that, too. What happens with the onions etc? Do they grow into onions or just leafy plants? Sorry for ignorance! :-)

I use sad looking lettuce as I would spinach to add when making soup. It cooks down to nothing and just tastes like green stuff.

www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/banana-skin--coconut-curry

I have to say I haven't tried it! Nigella made one too, I believe..

Great idea!

@Sexisthairdressers - If I know I'm going to plant the spring onion roots- I cut off the bottom 1-2cm of the white, root part and just plant into a trough of soil outside. They re-grow and you can eventually just trim them with scissors to use the tops, and they continue to grow. Mine do die back in the winter, but otherwise, I rarely buy spring onions!

I did the potato peel thing at christmas, I don't normally peel potatoes for much other than roast potatoes! My children loved them.

I cut the hard outer off the broccoli stalk, and slice the soft inner bit to steam with the rest of the broccoli, it's sweet and soft.

I've been adding edible weeds to soup - most recently herb robert and cleavers. I've also used rhubarb flowers in soup which give a pleasant lemonish taste.

We eat broccoli stalks, but most other vegetable offcuts go in a bag in the freezer and once a month or so I make a big pot of vegetable stock which is used for soup and stew or to cook pasta or make couscous.

This is what I use onion skins, root veg peelings, cauliflower and cabbage outer leaves, spring onion and leek tops for.
Potato peelings do get thrown away unless I'm feeling particularly virtuous in which case I make them into crisps, but I rarely have time for that much effort!!!
I'm also a Mumsnet-chickener : no scrap of meat or flavour wasted.