Waste not, want not: Giving life to your leftovers

We have all tried to meal prep at least once and then have become too busy to keep up with the planning, the buying, the cooking, and the storing. Maybe we’ve impulsively bought a new ingredient that we don’t usually reach for and then wondered what to actually make with it. Or we have simply done our grocery shopping without a list and ended up with far too much of the wrong thing. Whichever scenario fits best, I have compiled some ways of using up both vegetables and whole meals to try and reduce your probably overflowing food waste.

Vegetables are the easiest ingredients to use up because they can be thrown in pretty much any dish and won’t feel out of place. However, if you are lost, it helps to categorise them. Starchy veg such as potatoes, parsnips, sweet potato, and squash are excellent for meals that need to hold their shape, such as curries or stews. They also work great in bubble and squeak (with the added step of mashing the potato) or as vegetable fritters, as long as you have eggs and flour. Non-starchy vegetables such as pepper, onion, tomato, and broccoli are perfect additions to nearly any meal, and they work particularly well when they don’t have to be the main focus of the dish, such as in a chilli or stir fry. You can mix and match vegetables for a risotto or pasta recipe to really accentuate the flavours, or in an omelette for a lunch or breakfast option. These dishes also work well to use up any leftover frozen vegetables that you might have forgotten about. Where both starchy and non-starchy vegetables both prevail is in soups – just roast whatever vegetables you have left for about half an hour or so, then blend them with some stock and cream to create a super simple homemade soup that can be eaten for lunch or dinner.

If you have batch-cooked a meal but don’t want to eat it in the same way five nights in a row, try swapping out the sides

To make these meals seem like something you can realistically do, it helps to keep a well-stocked spice rack, to keep basic ingredients such as eggs, flour, and butter, and to section your fridges and cupboards so that you don’t find a loose, mouldy onion from before easter break rolling around. If you are completely out of inspiration, you can check social media for ideas on what to do with an eclectic mix of ingredients, or you can even just Google recipes that use them up.

If you have batch-cooked a meal but don’t want to eat it in the same way five nights in a row, try swapping out the sides. For example, if you had curry with rice one night, try it with naan the next night. Or if you had meatballs with pasta the first night, have it with mash and broccoli the next. It is good practice to know your volumes for single portions of things like rice, pasta, and mash so that you don’t make too much of them and have more leftovers than you don’t know what to do with. It also helps to learn a few basic recipes for side dishes – for example, equal parts yoghurt and self-raising flour make the dough for flatbreads or pizza bases (if you oven cook the base before putting your toppings on). A favourite of mine is one part butter to two parts self-raising flour and a splash of milk to create a basic savoury scone, which you can bulk up with cheese and meat before cooking for a tasty accompaniment to soups.

You can see if a housemate wants to swap your leftovers for theirs if they are similarly bored

Another way to not eat the same dinner for days on end is to have it for lunch instead –roast meats work great in sandwiches, chilli can be made into wraps, and a few slices of pizza can be a tasty main or side in your lunchbox. If you are really bored with the meal, you can put it in a freezer-safe container with the date it was frozen on it and eat it in a few weeks when you need a quick dinner (just check how long it can be frozen for and make sure there is no freezer burn on it before defrosting). Alternatively, you can see if a housemate wants to swap your leftovers for theirs if they are similarly bored – just make sure you two don’t have any allergies and that you both enjoy similar taste palates.

If all of this is still too much effort or time-consuming, there is, of course, the option of standing in front of the fridge and eating it cold after a club night, which is equally as reasonable.