Cooking with leftovers: 10 tips from the pros
Cooking with leftovers? and never waste food again
81.6 kilograms of food: That's how much each German throws away on average per year, according to a study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Consumer Affairs. In total, private households alone receive 6.7 million tons of food every year.
It does not have to be that because, after all, food was not only expensive, it is estimated that avoidable food waste per person and year is worth 235 euros. With leftovers you can also cook, fast, easy and delicious!
Marion Swoboda from the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde experimental kitchen says, "I do not want to throw anything away, so it was a bit of a challenge for me to start with what I can do with it." Today, I love fruit and vegetable remains because they keep coming up with quick creative ideas bring. " So that you do not throw away your food in the future, but can cook with leftovers, we have put together ten tips? for fruits, vegetables, bread, pasta, rice and more. And for every tip, there are also recipe ideas.
- vegetables
- fruit
- rice
- noodles
- potatoes
- loaf
- biscuits
- meat
- Herbs
- tomatoes
1. vegetables
A few carrots still shrivel up in the fridge and the peppers have had better days? These remnants are the perfect basis for a vegetable soup: just cut it all up, cook it and fill it up with vegetable broth.
If you like, add TK herbs and vermicelli. And if boiled potatoes from the previous day are left, they can also go into the pot. If there are not enough fresh vegetables left there, so that everyone gets full, you can also stretch the soup with a can of beans, chickpeas or frozen peas.
If you are unsure of exactly how it works, it is best to look at one of our recipes, such as the barley soup with vegetables or the vegetable soup with pesto. For a cream soup just add milk or cream and mash everything with the hand blender? as with the pepper cream soup.
By the way: Vegetable soup is also great for freezing!
2. Fruit
Why throw away overripe fruits? They work great in a pancake. All you need is eggs, flour, milk and sugar.
Whether apples, bananas, pears or berries: pancakes taste with fruits of all kinds. First, carefully clean the fruit and slice it if necessary. Put the dough for a pancake in a hot pan with buttered lard, add the fruit and bake the pancake over low heat. Here you will find recipe variants for blueberry pancakes and apple pancakes.
Who wants to preserve leftover fruit, for example, can cook a chutney. For this you only need fruit, vinegar and sugar as basic ingredients. Onions, garlic and spices make the chutney more interesting in taste. Look at the inspiration for how we make a mango chutney from a mango!
And another fruit idea: Clean fruit and puree with the hand blender? finished is an instantaneous smoothie. Who does not like it quite so viscous or has only little fruit left, fills up with mineral water. A delicious example of this kind of leftover is our pineapple smoothie.
3. Rice
Remaining rice makes itself well as a deposit in the soup. Just put the rice in the soup plate and pour over the boiling soup. That's enough to heat the rice. Tasty for example with tomato soup!
Who does not feel like soup, can process the cold rice into a rice salad? with canned corn, frozen peas, olives or what else fridge, pantry and freezer otherwise give. Our recipe for rice salad with Datteldip provides some suggestions.
4. Pasta
Cooked noodles quickly clump in a pot to a sticky ball. With the following trick, you can still eat them the next day: Just throw the cold noodles in boiling water and let it draw for ten seconds. This works best if the noodles were previously al dente, because the warm-up will make them a little bit softer. With a sauce to a quick leftover lunch.
Three simple recipes for pasta sauces can you find here? Tomato sauce, cream sauce and olive and herb sauce: Pasta with 3 sauces.
5. potatoes
Cooked potatoes are a good basis for a hearty farm breakfast. For two portions you whisk four eggs and four tablespoons of milk and season the egg milk with salt and pepper. Slice the potatoes and fry in a pan with buttered lard. Add the egg milk and let it stand. The perfect recipe for this is, for example, our farmer's breakfast of new potatoes.
And of course, boiled potatoes are perfect for crispy fried potatoes!
6. Bread
Stale white bread can be easily transformed into poor knights: Whisk 100 milliliters of milk, an egg and a packet of vanilla sugar, dip bread slices, drain and fry in a pan until golden brown. Applesauce for example tastes from the glass.
If you prefer something more sophisticated, you can also serve Poor Knight with wine sauce or Poor Knight with strawberry salad.
You can also let stale white bread just dry and later finely grate. With the homemade breadcrumbs you can bread schnitzel, bind sauces, make a crunchy crust for casseroles and much more.
7. pastries
Remains of Hefezopf and Brioche are tasty as Ofenschlupfer again? This bread casserole is especially popular in southern Germany. Here's a recipe for Apple Oven Slip.
8. Meat
Remains left over from the roast, you can cut the meat gossamer thin the next day and put on the bread.
If you like it more refined, you can also serve the roast slices with mayonnaise, remoulade or herb quark and add a salad? as in this recipe for potato salad with horseradish mayonnaise and roast beef.
9. herbs
Fresh herbs do not last long. Before leftover herbs wither, make a herbal quark rather: wash the herbs, chop them and stir in the quark. The quark, for example, tastes like bread, jacket potatoes or wedges. Even fresher is a mix of yoghurt, sour cream and cottage cheese? as in this recipe for herb quark with potato wedges.
Fresh herbs can also be frozen: fill the chopped herbs in ice cube trays and top up with a little water. So you always ready portioned herbal cubes at hand, with which you can refine soups and sauces, for example. More tips can be found in our article about freezing herbs.
10. tomatoes
From fresh tomatoes you can cook a tomato sauce and cook it or freeze it. Who wants to process larger quantities at once, should try our recipe for tomato concentrate.
Dried tomatoes are another idea: Slice the tomatoes, season with salt, pepper and herbs and leave to dry in the oven at 120 degrees for at least two to three hours. When soaked in oil, the dried tomatoes are durable in twist-off glasses and a nice gift. They taste for example in salad and pasta.
