Make the Most Out of Your Groceries
Now, more than ever, is the perfect time to really extend the use of your groceries.
You've already been trying to make your groceries last as long as possible. If you are still having trouble or would like fresh ideas on how to make the most of your ingredients, read on!
There are many times when we buy a list of groceries for a certain recipe and end up with an amount of leftover ingredients that may not be enough for another meal. Fear not! There are many ways to reuse ingredients.
Let’s take this random list of ingredients as an example to see how we can get multiple uses out of them:
Mushrooms - Many dishes only include mushroom caps, but not stems because they tend to be harder to cook and chew.
Celery - Sometimes you may not get to finish a whole bunch of celery in time before it starts to soften and discolor. There are still many ways to use this subtly fragrant vegetable in cooked dishes.
Herbs (eg mint & cilantro) - So you’ve made guacamole with just the cilantro leaves, but what about the stems? They (among many herbs) have very purposeful stems that will liven up many kinds of recipes!
Kale - Lots of recipes call for the leaves but not the stems, which are totally edible!
Potatoes - You may have a few leftover from making fries, baked potatoes, and/or curry
Prepare a vegetable stock. Collect your veggie scraps (ie mushroom stems, kale stems, celery bits, potato skins, herb stems, carrot ends, etc) and freeze them in a reusable bag until you have accumulated enough to make a sufficient amount of stock. When ready, put all your scraps in a pot, barely cover with water, and simmer for 30 minutes. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or freezer. You can also refine the taste of your stock by using specific ingredients and omitting others. Check out this Shiitake + Veggie Scraps Stock whose main star is a handful of shiitake mushroom stems.
Now that you have a stock, you can add it to things like soups, curries, or grains. We recently used it to make these Silky Steamed Eggs.
Throw a soup together. You can use that veggie stock to add great flavor to your next soup, or just make a hearty one from your scraps. Adding a potato or two into a soup can transform a watery soup into something '“creamy,” like this Smooth Celery Soup. Have extra mushroom caps? Throw them into a spicy dish, like our Veggie Tom Kha.
Make some fried rice. Putting fried rice together is one of the most convenient ways to finish off leftover ingredients: day-old rice, bits and pieces of vegetables, the last egg in the fridge, and/or the lonely sausage sitting next to the egg. Since these are mostly leftovers combined into one dish, take extra caution to cook everything thoroughly to get rid of unwanted microbes.
Stir-fry it up. This is a nearly foolproof way to make use of your stragglers and create a rounded dish. Growing up, my dad never failed to take the leftover rotisserie chicken and stir-fry it with whatever vegetables we had, soy sauce, garlic, black pepper, and sesame oil.
The possibilities are endless when trying to use one ingredient for multiple purposes, so let’s get a hold of reducing food waste!
