Cooking with leftovers? This is what you make with them!

Call it cottage industry or modern recycling, but in our house few leftovers disappear into the bin. After all, you can often still do so much with them! The Ready, Steady, Cook! (anyone remember the British television programme?) way of cooking. It is even smart to include in your shopping list that you simply cook with what you have leftovers at least one day a week. After all, clever use of leftovers is the way to avoid wasting food. With a little creativity, you can make all kinds of delicious dishes from the leftovers in your fridge. Need some inspiration? Gourmet Mahlee likes to share some clever leftover dishes with you, because secretly those leftover meals are the most delicious!

The secret to cooking with leftovers? A smart basic stock!

Do you regularly have leftovers after a meal? No problem if you know what to do with these leftovers. A basic stock of long-life ingredients is the secret to the tastiest leftover meals. We previously published an article about this: Cooking leftovers? These ingredients are essential in your pantry. That way, you always have something on hand to supplement your leftovers or transform into a completely new meal. Secretly, cooking with leftovers is perhaps the best way to cook. It makes you creative, you don't throw anything away and you don't have to go to the shop. So it is lazy too. Not such a kitchen prince or princess? We are happy to share the most delicious leftover dishes with you, because why throw away food if you can make something tasty with it?

Ultimate leftover dishes where you can get rid of all the leftovers

There are those ultimate leftover dishes where you can put almost anything in. Think curry, pasta and soup. You can almost always add leftover vegetables to a sauce, put the blender on and voila! And remember the recipe for the waste-me-not-pizza? That is why it is so convenient if you always have some pasta, rice or a basic stock in your pantry. Yet there are also those ingredients that sometimes get left lying around by accident, but which you don't so easily make into a meal. Ha, you thought!

Think carefully about what you do with an old baguette. Many people throw it away, but that's such a waste!

Leftover (baguette) bread

Baguette left over from a BBQ or just that butt of old bread no one eats? Don't throw it away! That you can make delicious French toast from old bread, we already know that trick, of course. And honestly: you don't eat those that often, do you?

Breadcrumbs

Another great thing you can do with old bread is to make panel flour. Just let your bread dry quietly in the oven for twenty minutes or so. Do you fancy deluxe panel flour? Then you can also add some dried herbs. Use a food processor to grind your toasted bread into a fine breadcrumb. By the way, a tea towel and a rolling pin will also work wonders. Extra fine: you can decide how coarse your grind will be.

Croutons

Butts of old bread turn into croutons in no time. Cut your leftover bread into cubes, add a little salt and pepper to taste, some nice olive oil and pop them in the oven for fifteen minutes. They keep for a long time in a large jar and you turn any salad into a full-fledged lunch dish with a handful of homemade croutons on top.

Bruschetta

So simple you might not think of it, but you can make delicious bruschetta out of that tough baguette a few days later. With other leftovers as topping, of course, such as overripe tomatoes, a butt of onion that was just too much or that shrivelled clove of garlic. You won't taste a thing when you throw them in the blender to make a tasty mixture! Add leftover soup and you put a complete meal on the table.

With leftovers, you can conjure up delicious meals such as bruschetta (pictured left) and panzanella (pictured right) in no time.

Panzanella

The Italians apparently do well when it comes to using leftovers. The Italian bread salad panzanella is another classic that you can put quite a lot of old bread in. Cut or tear your bread into pieces, drizzle generously with good olive oil and mix with tomatoes. Adding watermelon and leftover feta (you-know-what, that mini piece in the back of the fridge) or some spinach or lettuce also works perfectly. No one will know that that fancy summer salad on the table is the weekend's old bread.

What to do with vegetable leftovers?

Your week runs differently and suddenly that big pile of spinach is staring sadly at you. Or you've only used half a leek, pepper or onion and the other half cleverly packaged put down for another time in your fridge. Stress because you don't want to throw food away? Don't have to! Make a curry, a pasta or a soup, almost anything can go in there. Also a farmer's omelette - delicious as a homework lunch and ideal for finishing off the leftovers from the previous evening - or a stuffed nasi or okonomiyaki are fine leftover dishes.

Leftover leafy vegetables? Freeze it!

Do you regularly have leftover leafy vegetables and can't see a way to incorporate them into a dish? Then throw them in the blender and freeze them. The next time you want to whip up a quick curry and add a little extra vegetable, you'll have your cubes ready. By the way, frozen leafy vegetables are also a great way to add some extra vegetables to a smoothie! By the way, this also works really well with leftover fresh herbs.

Traybake with different vegetables

Fancy something with more bite than a soup, pasta or curry? A traybake is always good. You will be surprised how deliciously different types of vegetables combine. This works particularly well for harder vegetables: carrots, fennel, parsnips, celeriac, but also frying a whole onion or a clove of garlic is very tasty. Add some lemon or orange segments - go straight into the oven - and sprinkle with feta or blue cheese during the last few minutes in the oven. Slightly wetter vegetables, such as aubergine and courgette, also go very well. Just make sure the whole thing doesn't get too wet. Bet you'll be making this at least once a week.

Leftover vegetables, for example the trimmings, are a perfect base for a broth. Collect butts, stumps and peelings in a bag or in a container in the freezer.

Egg left over?

Actually (pun intended), you don't have eggs left over that often. You can use them in pretty much anything. But should you go on holiday and still have a box of them, the following options are a good idea!

Protein cocktail

Been baking vigorously? Chances are you have leftover protein. Lucky you, which is an excellent reason to make a cocktail like a pornstar Martini! It needs such a whipped egg white layer on top. Of course, sometimes you just have an egg yolk left over. Put it in a bowl with a little soy sauce for an hour and you have a perfect soy egg, delicious on your noodles.

Bake a leftover omelette

The omelette has already come up as an easy way to incorporate leftover vegetables, but of course it is also a smart way to use up lots of eggs quickly. A good omelette will take three eggs. You might quickly think of a farmer's omelette, but leftovers like bean sprouts or pak choi are also delicious in an omelette, add some soy sauce to your egg mixture and top with some sesame seeds and ginger strands left over from your last sushi and you have a luxurious Asian-inspired omelette.

Eton Mess

Egg whites left over because you made ice cream, for example? Whipped egg white foam makes delicious meringues, meringues or Eton Mess. And it may sound strange, but have you eaten canned chickpeas? Then don't throw away the chickpea water (aquafaba)! Because if you whisk aquafaba in the same way as animal protein, you will get a fantastic protein foam - only vegan. You can also, like beaten egg whites, spoon aquafaba through your cake batter to make it extra fluffy.

Easy as pancakes

Ok, this one might be a clue-in. But in case pancakes escaped your attention for a moment: frying pancakes is a great way to use a lot of egg.

Lucky leftovers

Sometimes you have those leftovers that you don't mind keeping at all. A favourite is the Parmesan rind. Cook it in a pasta sauce and the rind gives the sauce the ultimate umami kick. Really, that crust never just ends up in the bin again. By the way, don't forget to remove it from the sauce before serving. You can make super-easy chips from peeled but not yet cooked potatoes and once take the peel off oranges before squeezing them. By boiling the peel briefly, rolling it through sugar and then drying it in the oven, you make your own sugared orange peel. Delicious as a snack, beautiful as a cake or dessert decoration.

Leftovers? You now know what you can do with it!

Inspired? Leftover cooking is absolutely no rocket science. A little creative thinking, an extra look in the fridge and clever combining will get you a long way. Who knows, you might even discover new favourites yourself. Of course, there are endless other clever leftover dishes. We'd love to hear yours!

Bonus tip: many leftovers are heartily delicious for lunch. Dive into the fridge during a home working day, instead of automatically reaching for that brown bread. It will also make your lunches more adventurous. Has everyone got the hang of it? Who knows, we might even initiate a Greenlist variant of Ready Steady Cook!

More kitchen tips from thegreenlist.nl

• Looking for more vegan alternatives to egg? Read all about smart substitutes and vegan alternatives here.
• Overripe bananas in your fruit bowl? You can do this with it!
• Saving energy while cooking? Then definitely try passive cooking.
• Do you know these useful kitchen gadgets in the sustainable kitchen already?
  
  

Photo credits: main image, bruschetta and panzanella: Mahlee Plekker, bread: Bas Peperzak (Unsplash), vegetables: Sven Brandsma (Unsplash), eggs: Morgane Perraud (Unsplash).