Making the most out of a meal.

[Dr. Ricearoni]

Sorry that the title sucks, I don't know a good word for what I'm describing but I've been cooking a lot of homemade meals lately and recently I've become very interested in the kinds of recipes that can be prepared with more or less whatever is around you. Stuff like frying peeled potato skins or making your own stock from scraps that people normally wouldn't eat, or bigger things like stews and soups and such.

Does anyone know any good recipes or methods for really getting the most out of everything you eat? I'm very curious because I feel bad when I waste food.

 

[CHARizard]

Learn pasta, you can basically throw anything in with pasta and make it good. My goto after work dinner is just frying up onions and garlic, get that fragrant, add some cherry tomatos, and simmer with white wine until it all breaks down. Add some starchy pasta water and then whatever greens you got around, toss the pasta in and serve.

Here I wrote down my process for this. If you cant tell I dont really use a recipe, I just wing it every time because the end result is usually ok.

Oil to pan, I do olive, dont let it get smokey
Onion, however much you want, let it get fragrant
Add Garlic until fragrant
Red chili flakes, or fresh cayennes if you have them
Add cherry tomatos
Let the tomatos come up to temperature
White wine, use your best judgement, around a cup to two cups. Sub with normal water if you dont want to use wine
Clam juice if you have it, just a splash
Simmer and start boiling your pasta, make sure the water is salted
Half way through the pastas cook, ladel one cup of pasta water to your pan
At this point if you have green veggies add them in, broccoli, spinach, peas, basically anything you want to just use up
When pasta is a minute away from cooking, transfer noodles to pan
Toss and combine pasta with sauce and veggies, it should thicken up nicely
Serve with black pepper and whatever cheese you like

This dish comes together in 30 minutes, and allows me to use whatever I got laying around to add to it. Beans? Shrimp? Cabbage? basically whatever can just be added.

You mentioned stocks, you can make your own and sub the wine or water here for more savory tastes. I like to make whole chicken stock which is really easy to do, and is also a great way to use an entire bird for soups.

Learn this recipe by heart, its good and will not disappoint. You can use older veggies in the stock as well. Heres a pic of some I made a while ago with my homemade bread.

 

[wimzi]

I was inspired by the joke that Mexican food is the same 7 ingredients in different orders, but that really is the way to make ingredients stretch and to get the most bang for your buck. If you can figure out how to make multiple meals from the same ingredients, you can fake a lot of variety. For example:

• First night is straight up rice and beans, either on their own or in tacos
• Set aside some rice and soak overnight with milk, cinnamon sugar, and raisins for rice pudding
• Mash the beans and mix with seasonings for bean dip as a snack
• Combine left over rice and beans and mash with a binder like egg to make bean burger patties...
• ...or bake into a bean loaf and serve with gravy and veggies
• Turn the beans into chili and serve over rice
• Add stock, veggies, seasoning, and the last of the rice and beans for a quick soup

So boom, with a big bulk batch cook of rice and beans, plus tortillas, milk, seasonings, egg, and some canned veggies and stock you can eat all week without feeling horribly like you eating leftovers all the time. You can take the same concept with meat, pasta, etc...

 

[rel=alternate]

Does anyone know any good recipes or methods for really getting the most out of everything you eat?

When it comes to methods, I think that the most efficient is just to think ahead.

Make one meal and have in mind how the ingredients and leftovers can be used to make a completely different dish for the next day. It's also good practice if you don't like to waste, since most ingredients don't always come in the perfect quantity for whatever you want to make.

The most obvious candidate when it comes to scraps is stock or broth. Just keep the bones and the scraps, leave everything to cook down, strain and store for later use.

I also like to keep peels from citrus to make candy.

• Cut them into large chunks
• Bring them to a boil, drain and repeat a few times (2/3)
• Mix equal parts water and sugar, bring to a boil and add your peel, let it boil 5 minutes, then let it cool down.
• Repeat the operation.
• Once the syrup is cooled, place them on a rack to dry (best in the fridge).

You'll have your candy the next day (even better if you decide to deep in in chocolate once dry) and you will also have the opportunity to keep the syrup for later use.

 

[CHARizard]

I wanted to mention, if you ever smoke meat like pork shoulder. Save the bones! You can put them in a bag and freeze them, next time you make a bean soup or something just add the frozen bone! Adds a bit of porkiness to the dish. I do a 10 bean soup and always add leftover frozen meat and whatever bones I saved to give it that extra flavor.

 

[User names must be unique]

making your own stock from scraps that people normally wouldn't eat,

If you've got a a decent mix of fragrant off cuts you can put them in an oven for a few hours on very low to dry them out, then put them through a food processor to make a seasoning powder.

 

[GeorgeHWBush]

Learn to make soup with whatever you have on hand. Start with a chicken stock and just add vegetables, starches, and meats. Don’t over season it because you can’t take it out once you put it in! I’ve ruined meals by adding way too much salt like a retard. I like to make a healthy chicken vegetable stew/chili my cooking down 3 cans of whole peeled tomatoes, chicken stock, chicken, zucchini, carrots, peas, Lima beans, cannellini beans, onion, and anything else that sounds good that day. Don’t be afraid to experiment and learn some cooking basics. Good luck fellow retard.

 

[Triple Flutz]

I like to save bits and bobs from vegetables, same for meat bones. I save them in the freezer until I need one or have enough to make a stock. Anything from the brassica family, leafy greens, beets, potatoes, squash, etc. don't do so well in stock, but most other vegetables are perfectly suitable for it.
I also save stems from cilantro and other herbs, and blend them into salsa or dressings. Once it's blended, the flavor is similar to the leafy part and the difference in texture isn't a problem at all whereas adding cilantro stems to a taco is kind of meh. I actually made a really nice cilantro and lime dressing earlier today because I had some stems chilling in the fridge.
For leafy greens like those you get from a radish bunch, there are plenty of recipes for nice dishes- I just look up ideas and try my hand at it. You can also make pesto out of them.
My grandma would always make chicken soup the day after we had broccoli florets- she would peel the outer skin of the broccoli foot and cut it up in half-moons. I used to prefer it to the florets, tbh.
Candied citrus peels are great, but you can also boil the peels in some water to impart a pleasant, subtle scent to your home. I hate the harsh chemical smell from cleaning products and prefer scent-free, but this smells great to me. In the winter, I like to boil apples and cinnamon instead.
If you are able to dehydrate things, you can also dehydrate vegetable bits and bobs and pulse them into a powder. You can add said powder to soups or whatever else sounds good.

 

[Maginot]

Being able to cook from raw ingredients instead of factory products is a good start.

 

[ubunr9kpkk69c4ex]

Supermarkets will usually only sell the part of the vegetable that is high value and easy to ship, but if you grow your own vegetables most parts of the plant can be eaten and you can eat them at any stage of their lifecycle.

 

[annikaguts]

You can make a vegetarian protein source from plain all purpose flour. It's called Seitan, and it's bascially one of the proteins in wheat. You wash away the starch (some people make vegan cheese from it, I guess) and you're left with almost pure protein and not a lot of carbs.

 

[NormalPornForNormalPeople]

Composting vegetable peels, or feeding them to rabbits or chickens.
Learning to brown bones or scrap meats (maillard reaction) to flavor meat or stews.
The comments here mostly have it, but to expand on it, you can use the greens from carrot tops or beets, stuff like that.

 

[Yeeted Teet]

The best way to save food is to learn the theory of cooking. How flavours work together, balancing acids and fats, different cooking techniques. If you can do that you're not dependent on recipes and the exact items and quantities that they specify anymore, you can make up your own on the fly with whatever leftovers and dregs you happen to have lying around.

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

The best way to save food is to learn the theory of cooking. How flavours work together, balancing acids and fats, different cooking techniques. If you can do that you're not dependent on recipes and the exact items and quantities that they specify anymore, you can make up your own on the fly with whatever leftovers and dregs you happen to have lying around.

Do you know any resources that would be handy for learning this? I'm very interested in this concept

 

[annikaguts]

Do you know any resources that would be handy for learning this? I'm very interested in this concept

This is a great book. I would see if they have it at your library. https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/

Edit to avoid double posting. This is a fun channel and if you watch his earlier videos especially, you will see a lot of what not to do. The Anti Chef

 

[GamerGateSurvivor]

If you go fishing, use the fish guts as fertilizer for your crops. Plants love that shit.

 

[Triple Flutz]

Do you know any resources that would be handy for learning this? I'm very interested in this concept

The Flavor Bible is apparently pretty good, too- I will say that I don't own it, but I've parsed over one before wrapping it since I bought it as part of our friends' wedding registry, and it seemed like a really nice resource for those who are new to flavor pairings and don't immediately think ''lime and jalapeno might be nice here'' when faced with a bunch of cilantro.
It is not a cookbook, btw. Here is an excerpt of it I found online.