A question about excess ingredients.

Ricky91t

Hello folks,

This is my first post here so I hope I'm not breaching any rules or anything. :pac:

Anyway, I'm a student and like to Cook decent food instead of pizza/battered chicken etc but I've a few problems with excess ingredients.

Say I buy a type of vegetable for a dish and only use half, I've then got half left and usually this'll go to waste, I don't want a repeat of the dish the next night as I like variation and using it in the next dish wouldn't be possible. Say I have a Chinese style stir-fry one night and then some kind of pan fried fish the next night with mashed potato.

Say I cook this http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=40265 and pick green peppers, celery and cabbage, I then have all these left over and don't really know what to do with them. I've tried recipe sites when you input your ingredients but usually I'll need something else.

Any one have any tips on preserving/using excess ingredients that have a short shelf life?

Also, I mainly shop in large supermarkets where you usually have to purchase a packet instead of loose ingredients.

Thanks!

LaChatteGitane

I assume you have a fridge ?

Let's say you have green pepper, celery and cabbage left over.
Leave the cabbage in the fridge for a few days.

Finely chop, some celery and green pepper. Add to that chopped tomato, onion and a small can of sweetcorn. Use a dressing of your choosing. You can also add some coriander or parsley.

And there you have a salad for next day.

The day after that you can sautee some shredded cabage, mix with mashed potatoes and serve with a meat of your choice or a poached egg.

Chronic Button

It's really hard to avoid vegetable waste when cooking for one (or even two, at times).

One would be to save leftover veg and freeze it in baggies to make stock. I admit I rarely make home-made stock though as it is so time consuming and messy. You can keep your peelings for this too.

Another option is to make a pot of vegetable soup every week - you can have a bowl before dinner to up your veggie intake, or bring a bowl in a thermos to college for lunch.

The other thing to do is to plan your meals in advance so that you have no waste. Do a weekly shop and plan to incorporate all the veggies in all the meals.

One last bit - buy a compost bin and at least your wasted veg can help to grow new plants.

confusticated

Chronic Button wrote: »

The other thing to do is to plan your meals in advance so that you have no waste. Do a weekly shop and plan to incorporate all the veggies in all the meals.

This is the best thing to do. Plan out your dinners, and maybe lunches, for the week before you do your shop. Write down all the ingredients needed and how much of each and stick to your list. If something has an unusual ingredient that you wouldn't normally buy, see if you can find something else that'll use it and maybe include that in the plan for the following week if you haven't time this week. Veg do last a bit, you don't have to use it the following day. And I know you said you don't want the same thing 2 days in a row, but you could have it maybe Monday and Thursday?

Another option, and the one I usually go for to be honest, is to make big portions of things and freeze most of them. Handy to have a dinner in the freezer that you can just take out to defrost in the morning if you've a busy day.

Ricky91t

Thanks all!

LaChatteGitane wrote: »

I assume you have a fridge ?

Let's say you have green pepper, celery and cabbage left over.
Leave the cabbage in the fridge for a few days.

Finely chop, some celery and green pepper. Add to that chopped tomato, onion and a small can of sweetcorn. Use a dressing of your choosing. You can also add some coriander or parsley.

And there you have a salad for next day.

The day after that you can sautee some shredded cabage, mix with mashed potatoes and serve with a meat of your choice or a poached egg.

Yep I do, thanks for these suggestions, I've always just bought bagged salad like flourette or whatever it's called but I may give this a go.

As for sauteing it's something I've never tried so I'm looking forward to attempting that.

Chronic Button wrote: »

It's really hard to avoid vegetable waste when cooking for one (or even two, at times).

One would be to save leftover veg and freeze it in baggies to make stock. I admit I rarely make home-made stock though as it is so time consuming and messy. You can keep your peelings for this too.

Another option is to make a pot of vegetable soup every week - you can have a bowl before dinner to up your veggie intake, or bring a bowl in a thermos to college for lunch.

The other thing to do is to plan your meals in advance so that you have no waste. Do a weekly shop and plan to incorporate all the veggies in all the meals.

One last bit - buy a compost bin and at least your wasted veg can help to grow new plants.

Another thing I'm going to try doing is making home made soup, I got a special pack in Aldi a few days ago so will give that a shot first and see how it goes and may try with my own stuff. Is there any vegetables that I definitely shouldn't put in or is it generally everything and anything?

confusticated wrote: »

This is the best thing to do. Plan out your dinners, and maybe lunches, for the week before you do your shop. Write down all the ingredients needed and how much of each and stick to your list. If something has an unusual ingredient that you wouldn't normally buy, see if you can find something else that'll use it and maybe include that in the plan for the following week if you haven't time this week. Veg do last a bit, you don't have to use it the following day. And I know you said you don't want the same thing 2 days in a row, but you could have it maybe Monday and Thursday?

Another option, and the one I usually go for to be honest, is to make big portions of things and freeze most of them. Handy to have a dinner in the freezer that you can just take out to defrost in the morning if you've a busy day.

It seems it all comes down to planning so maybe I'll try this first, it could be the easiest solution!

I've no problem with the same meal more than once in the week just not the day after. Freezing stuff is something I've done in the past but the freezer isn't massive and there's 5 of us so I probably won't be able to do that too often.

confusticated

If there's five of ye in the house could you share dinners with someone? So you cook them a dinner and then the next week they cook for you? Very much depends on who you're sharing with, what they eat etc but I do it once in a while with my housemate and it works ok. There's only two of us though, could be trickier with five. Always nice to have a night off cooking though, and it's no extra work cooking for two than for one!

Toto Wolfcastle

Definitely plan in advance. You don't have to have the same dinner twice in a row to use up the same vegetables. For example, this week we're having a chicken and broccoli bake on Monday and I'll use the rest of the broccoli on Tuesday with lamb chops. We'll also have fine beans and carrots on Tuesday. The carrots were bought on Wednesday and they'll still be fine for Tuesday and the fine beans will also be used in a lamb curry on Thursday. Since I started planning our meals we have no vegetable waste. It's great because we used to have a lot. There's only two of us so while I understand that it's difficult to cook for one, if you sit down and think about it you wont have as much waste.

TeletextPear

I always find that peppers go off on me, so what I do now is buy the pack of three, dice them all up, mix them together to make a kind of medly of colours and then freeze individual portions in freezer bags. Then when I'm cooking a stir fry or whatever I can just throw in the contents of the bag and they defrost and cook away in the pan in no time. Other than that, I'd say to buy bags of frozen veg. Aldi (and I'm sure other supermarkets) have bags of broccoli, mixed veg, oven-roasted veg, etc, so you can have a bit of variety.

Bateman

I go through a lot of peppers, onions, and tomatoes. I use them in a stir fry, a chicken & pasta dinner, and a curry, sometimes in one week. Onions and tomatoes you'll use in toasted sambos for supper as well, and home made salsa if you're ever making that. I used to think a lot of stuff was awkward to use up (2 of us in our place), but if you try hard enough you'll think of dishes that aren't at all similar, but use the same ingredients.

hardCopy

Ricky91t wrote: »

Thanks all!


Another thing I'm going to try doing is making home made soup, I got a special pack in Aldi a few days ago so will give that a shot first and see how it goes and may try with my own stuff. Is there any vegetables that I definitely shouldn't put in or is it generally everything and anything?

The only warning I would have is to go easy on potato if you're adding it to soup, I once tried to thicken up a soup with potato and it ruined the whole batch. No amount of extra carrots or spices could fix the flavour.