Cooking with kitchen scraps reduces food waste, and inspires fun and creative recipes! It’s also is less expensive than purchasing all new ingredients. We recently dug into The Zero-Waste Chef by Anne-Marie Bonneau to find out how to put these ideas into practice! Below are a few of her suggestions on how to spice up your cooking, while reducing food waste.
Leek tops
The green parts of leeks can easily constitute more than a third of the leek! Instead of tossing them, chop them into bite-size pieces and cook to render them tender. I often toss them in stir fry. You can also add them to soups, stews, sauces, frittata, quiche and many other dishes. Or simply use them instead of an onion in your favorite recipe.
Wilting carrots, zucchini or parsnips
Shred these up for quick bread, muffins or pancakes or add them to soup. Try using shredded vegetables to make fritters. Here is the recipe for those. (You can also perk up your wilting vegetables by placing them in jars of water.)
Fruit scraps
Fruit scraps can be used to make scrap vinegar. Try apple scrap vinegar or any other type. Scraps from other fruit, such as pears or pineapples, will also work. To make this, fill a jar with the scraps, add a spoonful of sugar, pour water just to cover, secure a lid or cloth, stir daily, wait and strain. The naturally occurring bacteria on the fruit will transform the fruity water to slightly alcoholic, then vinegary. At that point strain the vinegar and use it.
Bones
If you eat meat, save the bones. Put them in a slow cooker, cover with water and cook on low for 24 hours to render really good bone broth. Add a splash of vinegar to help draw the minerals from the bones. When the bones are very soft, if you have dog, purée the bones in a bit of the broth until completely smooth for a doggy treat. Dogs go wild for this!
