Amid a busy week, it’s normally not real looking to prepare dinner and put together three meals and two snacks each single day. Meal prepping and batch cooking play an unlimited position in establishing wholesome habits and getting meals on the desk, however understanding find out how to jazz up these leftover meals and components is a novel ability that may prevent an immense quantity of money and time. Plus, reworking leftovers into one thing new helps to vastly cut back meals waste.

If you’re questioning what to do along with your leftovers, listed below are some frequent leftover components and how one can breathe new life into them.

What to Do with Leftovers

Cooked Rice + Other Gluten-Free Grains

We truly wish to prepare dinner additional rice and gluten-free grains particularly so we’ve some left over! If you may have leftover rice available, use it to:

Almond Pulp

We like making nut milk from scratch, so we find yourself with a variety of leftover nut and seed pulp! Save the pulp in a bag or jar within the freezer, and if you’ve received sufficient listed below are 9 methods to make use of it.

Cooked Chicken or Turkey

A typical leftover ingredient, particularly across the vacation season. Here’s what you are able to do with cooked rooster or turkey leftovers:

Burgers

Veggie or meat burgers are nice recipes for batch cooking, however typically you don’t need to have them the identical previous manner in buns or lettuce leaves. Instead, attempt serving leftover burgers:

• With a aspect of wholesome baked French Fries
• Crumbled up over a salad
• Broken up into hamburger soup or lasagna soup
• In a bolognese sauce with gluten-free pasta or zucchini noodles
• As a wholesome pizza topping

Salad Greens

Didn’t expend your whole darkish leafy greens this week? That’s OK! Get additional life out of your greens earlier than they go dangerous by:

• Juicing them with low-glycemic fruits
• Blanch, chop and freeze for later
• Blitz with olive oil, lemon, dietary yeast and sunflower seeds for a nut-free pesto
• Make a number of inexperienced smoothies and freeze them
• Wilt them on the finish of cooking one-pot meals or Instant Pot meals
• Bake kale chips

Roasted Vegetables

We wish to eat plenty of veggies right here on the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, and roasting them actually enhances their flavour. With any leftover veggies you may have available, you’ll be able to:

• Fold into an omelette, frittata or scrambled eggs
• Toss into savory oatmeal or savory pancakes
• Use in a stir-fry with leftover rice
• Bake a casserole with a thick and creamy sauce
• Whip up a fast and simple soup
• Stuff them into rice paper wraps or lettuce wraps
• Blend them with chickpeas to make a veg-infused hummus or dip
• Make a veggie pot pie
• Use for pizza toppings
• Mix right into a salad with beans or grains
• Fold them into gluten-free flatbreads and different baked items (puréed squash and pumpkin are nice for this!)
• If you may have contemporary veggies you didn’t get round to roasting, attempt pickling them

Stale Bread

There are solely so many days you’ll be able to eat avocado toast! Take your leftover gluten-free bread and:

• Blitz in a meals processor for breadcrumbs (save in jars within the freezer for later use)
• Bake a gluten-free and dairy-free bread pudding
• Blend with walnuts, roasted pink peppers and spices for muhammara 
• Make croutons
• Create a bread salad with a great deal of contemporary veggies and tomatoes

Overripe Bananas

Photo: That Clean Life

Super brown bananas can be utilized in quite a lot of methods:

Crushed Tomatoes or Tomato Paste

Sometimes you don’t expend the entire jar or BPA-free can! Try:

• Freezing in ice dice trays for successful of flavour you should utilize later in recipes
• Cook with onions, garlic, herbs and veggies to create do-it-yourself tomato sauce
• Make salsa, plum sauce, ketchup or scorching sauce
• Fold into scrambled eggs or omelettes
• Use as a pizza sauce
• Blend with soaked cashews for a vegan ‘cream’ of tomato soup

Fresh Herbs

When saved correctly, contemporary herbs can final not less than every week within the fridge. If you aren’t in a position to make use of them up earlier than they wilt, then:

• Mix with olive oil, then freeze in ice dice trays
• Blitz to make a fast pesto, then freeze
• Dry them out, and retailer in sealed jars within the pantry
• Make herbes salees or infused vinegar
• Add to smoothies and juices
• Replace half of your salad greens with contemporary herbs

We hope these concepts spark your creativity – love your leftovers and use them effectively!