Let’s be real. We’ve all been there. You open your fridge and discover the wilted celery, the half-used bunch of herbs turning brown, or those lonely vegetables you swore you’d use in a stir fry. After a dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, quantities of unsold or uneaten food rebounded in 2023 to an alarming level in the United States alone. The numbers tell a sobering story about our relationship with food waste.
Here’s the thing. Most of us genuinely want to do better. Food waste costs the average U.S. consumer hundreds of dollars per year. That money could fund a nice vacation or help pad your savings account. The truth is, leftover ingredients don’t have to meet their doom in the trash bin or compost pile. There are surprisingly simple, practical ways to give them new life. So let’s dive in.
Freeze Everything That’s About to Turn
Freezing might seem obvious, yet it remains one of the most underutilized weapons against food waste. Some herbs maintain their flavor better when frozen instead of dried, including parsley, dill, basil, chives, lemon balm, mint or tarragon. Think about those fresh herbs you bought for one recipe but only needed a tablespoon.
Freezing vegetables, especially in small batches, is quite simple and quick, taking only about ten minutes to freeze a bunch of kale or chard. The key is proper blanching for most vegetables. Blanching stops enzyme activity that can cause loss of flavor, color, and texture over time. Simply plunge your vegetables into boiling water for a specific duration, then shock them in ice water.
For herbs specifically, try this genius trick. Chop delicate herbs like parsley and cilantro and place in a silicone ice cube tray, then top with olive oil, cover and freeze, so you can pop a cube into the skillet to instantly add an herbaceous hit. Each frozen cube becomes a flavor bomb ready to transform your weeknight pasta or soup.
Freezing fresh herbs significantly prolongs their usability, preventing spoilage and waste, while frozen herbs are ready to use anytime, making meal prep faster and easier, and freezing retains the fresh taste, aroma, and nutritional value better than drying them. Honestly, once you start building a freezer stash of pre-prepped ingredients, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this years ago.
Turn Vegetable Scraps Into Rich Homemade Stock
Stop throwing away those onion ends, carrot peels, and celery leaves. All you have to do is save up your leftover vegetable scraps in the freezer, and once you have enough, dump those scraps into a pot full of water and simmer. This might be the easiest kitchen hack you’ll ever adopt.
The beauty of scrap broth is its flexibility. Some of the best options include celery stems, carrot stalks, carrot greens, onion peels, garlic roots, apple cores, herbs of any kind, kale stems, and lemon rinds. Keep a designated freezer bag or container and toss in clean scraps as you cook throughout the week.
When you’re ready to make stock, it couldn’t be simpler. Place the vegetable trimmings in a large stock pot, fill the pot just above the trimmings with cold water and add crushed garlic cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, fresh herbs and salt, cover and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 25-30 minutes. The result? A deeply flavorful broth that costs virtually nothing.
Some vegetables don’t belong in your stock pot though. Vegetables that have overpowering or strong bitter flavors should be left out of homemade stock, including Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, cabbage, and some leafy greens, as well as spoiled or sprouted vegetables, avocado seeds or skins and banana peels. Keep those out and your broth will be golden.
Repurpose Wilted Vegetables in Cooked Dishes
That slightly sad-looking produce isn’t garbage. Foods can be past their prime but still safe to eat, as whole grain bread that has turned hard can be used for French toast or a strata, and vegetables that have wilted could be added to a soup or stew. I’ve made some of my best soups from vegetables that looked ready for the compost bin.
Produce that is past its prime, as well as odds and ends of ingredients and leftovers, may still be fine for cooking, and you can repurpose these ingredients in soups, casseroles, stir fries, frittatas, sauces, baked goods, pancakes, or smoothies to avoid wasting these items and may even create new favorite dishes. The heat from cooking transforms limp vegetables into something delicious.
Consider parts of vegetables you typically discard too. Many Americans eat only the broccoli florets and leave the stems, throwing away nutrition and money, yet cooked separately for a bit longer than the tops to soften them, broccoli stems provide calcium, iron, and zinc. Why waste perfectly good nutrients?
Find ways to use rather than toss food that isn’t fresh, as vegetable scraps and peels can be made into soup stock, apples or blueberries that are soft work perfectly cooked in oatmeal, and you can even use stale bread to make croutons or an egg strata, while slightly wilted vegetables are great for soups or stir-fries. Trust me, your wallet will thank you.
Master the Art of Pickling and Fermenting
Pickling transforms leftover vegetables into tangy, crunchy delights that last for weeks. You chop up the vegetable, put it in a jar, cover it with brine, weigh the veg down so it all stays submerged, wait two weeks and you have delicious fermented pickles. It sounds almost too simple to be true.
There are two main approaches to pickling. Pickling includes both preserving food by submerging in vinegar or by fermentation in a brine. Quick pickling with vinegar gives you results in days, while fermentation develops complex flavors and beneficial probiotics over time. Vegetables that have been fermented will be full of probiotics, and if a vegetable has been lacto-fermented, the process will develop an incredible, unique, complex and zingy flavor of the vegetable, with batches varying and flavours continuing to develop over time.
You can pickle or ferment just about any vegetable depending on your personal taste preferences, and both pickling and fermenting will add a salty, acidic, and complex flavor to any fresh produce you choose. Those leftover carrots, cauliflower, peppers, or radishes sitting in your crisper? Perfect candidates.
The health benefits make this preservation method particularly appealing. While vegetables pickled with vinegar are not bad for you, they are not as good for your gut like fermented vegetables are, as you want the good lactobacillus bacteria that can only come from fermenting, where lactobacillus bacteria change naturally present sugars in vegetables into lactic acid, which is a natural preservative that fights any bad bacteria and preserves the flavor, texture, and nutrients of the food. Pretty amazing what a little salt and time can accomplish.
Get Creative With Leftover Ingredients You Never Thought to Save
Leftovers can even become ingredients for meals later in the week using the ‘Cook Once, Eat Twice’ method, where you plan your meals around key foods that can be prepared in larger quantities and then use the extras to create a totally different meal, and using your leftovers can also help you save time, labor, and money. This approach completely changes how you think about meal planning.
If safe and healthy, use the edible parts of food that you normally do not eat, such as using stale bread to make French Toast or croutons, sautéing beet greens for a delicious side dish, and using vegetable scraps for soup stock. So many ingredients have hidden potential we overlook in our rush to clean the kitchen.
A simple way to reduce food waste at home is to get organized by arranging your fridge so that items with the nearest expiration dates are front and center, and keeping a running list of your food inventory and its use-by dates can help prevent overbuying and forgotten food, while a 2020 study showed that these small habits can lead to significant savings of both food and money. Small changes create big results.
The mental shift matters just as much as the technique. We need to shift our perception of food, and instead of cooking whatever we’re in the mood for, we should make meal decisions based on what needs to be used first, while researching recipes that use leftovers and food scraps is a great way to be more resourceful. Think of your fridge as a puzzle where you’re finding creative ways to use every piece.
Look, I get it. Life is busy and sometimes that celery just gets forgotten in the back of the crisper drawer. Yet with these five strategies, you can dramatically cut down on food waste, save hundreds of dollars annually, and feel pretty good about reducing your environmental footprint. Start with just one approach. Maybe you begin saving vegetable scraps for stock this week. Next month, you experiment with freezing those leftover herbs. Before you know it, these habits become second nature. The best part? You’re not just preventing waste. You’re creating something delicious from ingredients you once would have tossed without a second thought. What will you save from the trash today?
