How to Turn Table Scraps into Gourmet Meals

Are you ready to turn your table scraps into gourmet meals? Read on to learn the best zero-waste cooking tips that will have you turning table scraps into gourmet meals. Or growing new food from kitchen waste. Or learning how to compost those food scraps so you can use them in your vegetable garden to grow the best produce possible.

As food waste continues to contribute to environmental issues, chefs and home cooks alike are looking for creative ways to repurpose every part of their meals. It’s something my Yankee mother taught me to do from when I was a child. For us, leftovers were a treat not a bother.

The benefits of reusing table scraps

By utilizing every part of your ingredients, you can make the most of your groceries, reducing the need to buy additional food. Using stale bread, for example, to make croutons ensures that nothing goes to waste and eliminates the need to pay expensive grocery store prices for this household staple.

When you experiment with using table scraps, like stems, peels and cores, you may discover unique tastes and culinary possibilities you would not have considered. This can lead to more interesting meals that enhance your cooking experience and push your palate. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Stockpile your scraps

More likely than not, after cooking one meal, you won’t have enough table scraps to do anything substantial with. This is why accumulating vegetable peels, ends and other trimmings in a dedicated container in your freezer is essential to a zero-waste kitchen. This method ensures that you always have base ingredients for your soups and stocks and extends the shelf life of items that would normally go to waste.

Use scraps to grow new food

Once I learned to grow food from kitchen scraps, I never looked at food waste the same again. I’ve discovered 23 vegetables and herbs you can regrow from their scraps. Most often we’re growing new lettuce but we’ve also had great success with growing new bok choy from a bulb we might otherwise have thrown away.

Create a compost bin for non-edible table waste

While zero-waste cooking attempts to eliminate as much waste as possible, some amount is inevitable. You can’t repurpose table scraps like coffee grounds or eggshells. These are not edible once used up. However, that doesn’t mean you have to throw them in the trash.

It’s one of the reasons I strongly recommend that every household learn how to compost their food scraps. It’s so easy to set up a compost bin to ensure food you can’t reuse has a sustainable place to go, thereby contributing to reducing the load on landfills. Even better: once you start making compost, you get free fertilizer to use on your plants or to use when planting a vegetable garden.

Bonus: with composting, you’re putting less trash out for pick up. If you pay for that service, it saves you money.

Get creative with your leftovers

Being creative and adaptable is the cornerstone of zero-waste cooking. Chef Jenn Allen, author of Keto Soup Cookbook and Keto Diabetic Cookbook and Meal Plan, suggests using leftovers in different yet creative ways.

For example, you can repurpose vegetables in soups or sauces. On the other hand, you can take leftover grains and use them in salads or stir-fries. We used leftover risotto to create our copycat Trader Joe’s arancini rice balls recipe.

If you have an abundance of one ingredient, consider how you might use it sparingly across several dishes. Use grilled meats or fish, for example, in burritos, omelets and casseroles within a week. This will help you avoid feeling like your meals are repetitive.

That’s exactly how we reuse the meat from our pork loin in the Crock Pot recipe. What’s leftover becomes the filling for burritos or another meal on another day.

Plan meals around what you have

Before heading to the grocery store, ensure you take stock of what you already have. Zero-waste kitchens thrive on careful and intentional consumption. This practice will help you in a few ways. One, you will avoid unnecessary purchases. And, two, it will encourage you to buy ingredients with a purpose, making the most of what you have. Additionally, when you portion out batch-cooked meals for the week, you reduce the likelihood of spoilage. This helps to make cooking more efficient.

Learn proper storage techniques

Proper storage is the key to extending the life of your fresh foods and reducing waste from spoilage. For example, I can make leafy greens last the longest when I store them with a paper towel. Additionally, herbs keep best when stored in a glass of water covered in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Airtight containers maintain leftovers and labeling them with dates can help track their freshness. Learning more about the best ways to store different foods can help you make the most of your groceries.

Adjust seasonings as you go

Cooking with scraps and leftovers can be a bit of an adjustment initially. Often, scraps may not have the same intensity of flavor as you’re used to, so you may need to compensate with additional spices, herbs and seasonings.

Taste your food as you go without being afraid to experiment with flavor adjustments to suit your preferences. Practice makes perfect and this method ensures that your dishes are as delicious as they are sustainable.

Turning common table scraps into gourmet meals

Zero-waste cooking is founded on creative ways to use typically discarded parts of your ingredients. Some common kitchen scraps are usually thrown away. However, by utilizing every part of your ingredients, you can create dishes that are both delicious and environmentally friendly.

Vegetable peels and ends

Vegetable peels and ends are often discarded, but they are packed with nutrients and flavor that can be used to make a delicious vegetable broth for soups, stews and sauces. To make your broth, gather peels from staple vegetables like carrots, onions and celery. Boil them in a large pot with water, salt and pepper, simmer for an hour then strain out your vegetable scraps. Not only is this homemade broth cheaper, but it also tastes fresher than store-bought alternatives.

This is exactly how I learned to make my grandmother’s Jewish chicken soup. And I can tell you from firsthand experience it is easy, economical and delicious.

You can also replicate this method to make a delicious vegetable peel soup. Add more spices to suit your preferences while simmering and instead of straining out the vegetable scraps, use an immersion blender to incorporate them at the end of the cooking process.

Another great use for vegetable peels is to make roasted peel chips. Toss the peels in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and any other desired seasonings and roast in the oven until crispy for a healthy snack.

Fruit scraps

Fruit scraps are versatile ingredients that can enhance various recipes and drinks. Instead of throwing out peels and rinds, consider using them to make infused waters and teas.

Allowing apple peels, berry tops or citrus rinds to infuse into your water for a couple of hours in the refrigerator imparts a subtle and refreshing fruit flavor. These scraps can also be steeped in your tea to add a nuanced fruitiness to classic flavors.

Another great use for fruit scraps is to create homemade vinegar. Leftover parts of the apple or even pineapple skins can be left to ferment in a clean jar with water and sugar for a couple of weeks to make a tangy vinegar. This vinegar can be used in homemade salad dressings, marinades or even as a natural cleaning agent. By repurposing fruit scraps, you can discover new flavors that may have otherwise been thrown away.

Stale bread

Nothing is quite worse than having to throw away half a loaf of bread because it has gotten stale. One classic way to repurpose bread is to make croutons. You do this by cutting the bread into cubes, tossing it with olive oil, garlic powder and other herbs of your choice, and then baking in the oven until golden and crispy.

Another delicious option is a panzanella salad, which eliminates the effort of even making croutons. This Italian dish combines chunks of stale bread with tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions and basil, dressed in olive oil and vinegar.

For a sweet option, try out a bread pudding. This dessert transforms stale bread into a custardy treat by soaking the bread in a mixture of milk, eggs, sugar and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. We’ll use a stale loaf of bread to make our overnight French Toast in the Crock Pot. It ends up tasting just like bread pudding.

Bones and meat scraps

Similar to the use of vegetable peels, bones and meat scraps can also be used to make rich and flavorful stocks and broths. Simmer meat bones with aromatics like onion, garlic and fresh herbs of your choice to extract the nutrients and flavors from the bone. The high collagen content in bone broth is great for joint health and adds rich flavor to any soups, stews and sauces, or can even be enjoyed on its own. 

For a delicious gourmet meal, use the bone broth to prepare risotto. Start by heating the broth in a large pot while you sauté shallots and lightly toast Arborio rice in a saucepan. Ladle in the bone broth and allow each portion of broth to be absorbed by the rice before adding the next. Finish your risotto with a generous amount of butter and parmesan cheese to create a creamy and lush dish steeped in subtle and aromatic bone broth flavors.

Portion of this article originally appeared on Food Drink Life.