Food writer and former professional cook Tamar Adler says it's time to rethink leftovers, from wilted lettuce to last night's takeout lo mein.
Unless you’re a wizard in the kitchen, it’s natural to feel a little intimidated by cooking. When you’re spending 45 minutes making a meal, it can feel like the pressure is on to get it right. Otherwise, you’ll have wasted time, effort, and money. In an effort to get it right every time, maybe you’ve come to rely on recipes, following them to a T. While recipes are undoubtedly helpful, they can often lead to food waste. Recipes rarely tell you what to do with the ends of a baguette when making homemade croutons, the stub from the block of cheese you grated, or the tops of the veggies you just chopped.
Many of us don’t even realize how much waste we’re producing. Americans throw out a staggering one-third of the food they purchase. Sometimes, it’s because food that was bought with the best of intentions just doesn’t sound all that appetizing once you get home. Other times, it’s because you just don’t want to eat a meal you ate the day before, leaving foods like already dressed salads and takeout Chinese to be dumped in the trash.
One way to cut down on food waste is learning to trust yourself more in the kitchen. (Psst: You don’t always need to follow a recipe.) How do you do it? According to food writer and former professional chef Tamar Adler, it starts by looking at the food in your fridge through an entirely new lens. Her book, The Everlasting Meal Cookbook, serves as an incredibly extensive glossary, giving ideas on how to cook with any type of leftover you can think of. Wilted lettuce, stale bread, potato chip crumbs…No food is left out. There’s also a big underlying message that contrasts with most other cookbooks: trust yourself.
Instead of relying on “best by” dates, Adler encourages people to use their senses. How does a food look, feel, and smell? This is the first step to finding new ways to use them. Also, she encourages everyone to stop viewing their leftovers as, well, leftovers. “I understand that we collectively refer to [foods] that we have not finished as leftovers, but I think it’s better to look at these foods as their own ingredients and not in the context of what you made before,” Adler says.
Going with your gut and exploring foods in new ways will transform the way you view what’s in your fridge and pantry. The reward will not only be less food and money wasted, but an unexpected delicious new meal to enjoy.
The case against throwing leftovers out
Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal to throw out a half baguette that’s gone stale or the Tupperware of prepped salad you never felt like finishing. What’s the big deal? But Adler says that throwing out food is a waste of your own time, money, and effort (yours or someone else’s). “[When you make a meal], you put some of yourself in it,” she says. Adler points out that making a meal requires coming up with what to make, shopping for the ingredients, and adding seasonings and herbs. “When you throw it out, you’re throwing out something you’ve cared about and tended to,” she says. “Even if you brought food home from a restaurant, someone else went through all of that caring and tending to. They put themselves into that meal.”
Adler says that there’s also a sense of self-sufficiency when you find new ways to use what you already have. “When you throw food out, you’re losing that sense of self-sufficiency. You have to go back out to the store again to all the vicissitudes of the world around you. It feels better not to be shackled,” she says.
Of course this is all in addition to the money you’re dumping in the trash along with Tuesday’s takeout tandoori chicken. The average American spends $1,500 a year on food they will never eat. Adler adds that it’s also important to recognize that the planet doesn’t have infinite resources. “It’s time for us to see the value in all of our material things, including food,” she says.
How to put your leftovers to delicious use
If you’re not used to repurposing your food, it requires a mindset shift, starting with looking at leftovers as their own unique ingredient and getting curious about how it could be used in a new way. Adler’s pro advice is to let the leftover food you want to use serve as the starting point for your meal. This is, of course, when having her glossary can come in handy. But if you don’t have it, consider what new role the ingredient could play.
Let’s use wilted, dressed salad as an example since lettuce is the most commonly thrown out food in the U.S.: Adler repurposes it by folding it into the yolks of cooked eggs, using it as a filling for a deviled egg-esque dish. “It’s almost like a little Cesear salad in each egg,” she says. Adler has also blended wilted salad and served it as a green gazpacho—another way to use this very commonly thrown out food.
Adler says that traveling plays a big role in stoking her own curiosity around food. She says that recently, she vacationed in Italy and France and she took home many ideas from the meals she ate there. “Someone made me a delicious pesto from dandelion greens that had not yet bloomed; after they bloom, dandelions become too bitter for pesto. Experiences like that reawaken my interest in food,” she says. If you’re not traveling this summer, eating at new restaurants—or ordering something you’ve never tried before from your favorite go-to restaurants—can also spark new curiosity around food.
Not every meal using leftovers may turn out amazing, but when it does, Adler says that it’s so satisfying. “You feel so ingenious when it’s good,” she says. Next time you peek into your fridge and see containers full of leftovers, think about all the new ingredients you have to play with. You just might like your repurposed meal even more than what you originally made.