It’s a shame that so many food scraps get thrown away. This isn’t just a wasted opportunity to feed the compost pile or grow new veggies on your kitchen counter.
Many of these scraps can actually be used to create an entirely new meal, snack, or as an ingredient substitute in different recipes.
Here are just a few of the many delicious foods you can cook from scraps most people toss in the bin.
Fat Drippings
A lot of people, if not most people, drain their ground beef, pork, or bacon fat and toss it in the trash.
Worse yet, some dump their fat down the sink and gunk up their plumbing, creating a bigger problem for themselves down the line.
Instead of pouring your fat drippings down the sink or in the trash, you can drain it into a cup or jar and either place it on your counter or store it in the fridge to use as cooking oil or grease.
Fat stored in this way tends to last for a few months when kept in the fridge.
Related: 25 Survival Uses For Leftover Bacon Grease
If you don’t use a fridge, you can keep it on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat for a week or two before it needs to be replaced. Bacon grease seems to last longer compared to other fats kept at room temperature.
“Cracklins” Or “Gribenes” From Fat Trimmings
Cracklins from pork fat – or “gribenes” if you’re using chicken fat – are both delicious snacks you can make from saved fat pieces harvested from cuts of meat.
Simply collect trimmings of fat and place them in a shallow pan.
Cover them with just enough water to submerge them.
Render the fat on low heat until the pieces of fat become crunchy and liquid fat is rendered in the pan.
This “liquid gold” is called “lard” when rendered from pork and “schmaltz” when rendered from chicken.
Then, strain the liquid fat into a jar and set the crunchy fat pieces on a paper towel or cloth to drain off any excess oil.
These crunchy pieces are called “cracklins” when made from pork and “gribenes” when made from chicken. They’re delicious salty snacks that are great on their own, but they’re a real treat when served over potatoes or liver and onions!
Since some fats heat up differently, it’s best to keep animal fats rendered and stored separately, rather than mixing different kinds of fat together.
Fermented Foods From Veggie Scraps
When you cut up veggies, do you eat the entire vegetable?
If you’re like a lot of people, you might discard the ends of your cucumbers, the outer layer of your onions, or the core of your cabbage.
Yet, these pieces are still edible.
Instead of throwing the unsightly or tougher parts of veggies away, throw them in a jar and ferment them.
⇒ Don’t Throw Away Onion Skins, Do This Instead!
Fermented chopped veggies make a tangy and delicious salad topper, relish substitute, or snack. Plus, fermented foods are great for your gut health and digestion.
Gravy
There are so many things you can do with meat scraps. If you find yourself tossing out the fat left over from your ground beef, pork chops, or steak, think again.
You can make a delicious homemade gravy with those brown bits stuck to the bottom the pan.
Simply deglaze the pan with some cooking liquid – like water, milk, bone broth, veggie broth, or chicken broth – and agitate, stir, and scrape the bits at the bottom with a spatula.
Then, add a slurry of flour and water and you’ll have a rich, glossy, homemade gravy to complete your meal.
Vegetable Greens
Whenever you’re cutting vegetables or making a salad, you usually end up with a few leftover pieces that inevitably end up in the trash.
However, a lot of vegetable green scraps that get tossed can still be used as ingredients for other meals.
Beet greens, celery leaves, broccoli stocks, radish greens, and many other edible stocks and leaves are discarded in the kitchen.
This is a shame because a lot of these veggie scraps may be even more nutritious than the “good part” of the vegetable.
Related: 10 Vegetables That You Can Stockpile Without Refrigeration For A Full Year
If you’ve ever had southern-cooked collard greens, you already know how delicious veggie “scraps” can be since this delicious food was once considered to be kitchen scraps.
So, instead of tossing your odds-and-ends try storing them in a bag instead. Add these greens to your salads throughout the week, or sauté them with other veggies for an underrated and tasty side dish.
Fruit And Veggie Chips
Many of us discard our apple peels, sweet potato skins, carrot skins, cucumbers, and other scraps from fruits and vegetables. This is usually because people just aren’t aware of what they’re throwing away.
Fruit and veggie chips are made by baking or dehydrating the skins from fruits and vegetables. They’re delicious, healthy, and basically free.
Potato peels, for example, are loaded with vitamins and antioxidants. However, a ton of recipes call for skinning them before cooking.
Instead of throwing your potato skins away, try baking them instead. Potato chips aren’t the only food you can make with the peels, though.
Related: How to Grow Potatoes in Shopping Bags for an Extended Harvest
You can shred them to make hash browns or a pot of rich and creamy potato soup. Potato skins and other vegetable scraps are much too valuable to simply toss in the trash.
Bones For Stock
If you’ve ever cut up or butchered a whole chicken for meat, you already know that there are many bones left over once the meat has been removed.
You can make a rich and gelatinous chicken stock. Simply drop all those bones in a pot of salted water, bring to a boil, and allow to simmer for 1-8 hours.
You may need to replace some water as needed due to evaporation. When you have your own stock on hand, your meal possibilities seem to open up considerably.
Veggie Stock
Making veggie stock is another frugal and rewarding way to use up extra veggie scraps that would otherwise be thrown away.
Toss veggie ends such as onions, celery stubs, tomato stems, garlic nubs, and carrot skins into a boiling pot of salted water and cook for a few hours until fragrant.
You can add herbs and spices like thyme or rosemary to dial up the flavor of your veggie stock. When you’re done, you can toss the veggies from the broth into the compost bin which allows them to serve multiple purposes.
This list only highlights a handful of possible recipes you can create with kitchen scraps. You can make slaws, salsas, chutneys, omelets, and much more all from discarded pieces of produce from the kitchen.
Doing this can help you stretch your food budget farther and allows you to get the most out of your groceries with almost zero waste.
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Around this house the bacon grease is saved and used up faithfully. Chicken fat goes out for the trash man. I probably throw out as much veggies as the average person, but they do go to the compose pile. Bones usually get boiled to be a soup starter. I give my self a C minus, the author is right we could do better.
Picked up this tip while watching Jacque Pepin. He saves kitchen scraps in a clean recycled milk carton in the freezer. He keeps vegetable scraps separate from bones, so he maintains two separate cartons, one for each. He adds to them as he goes along making meals, and when they are filled, he makes stocks. He learned how to cook fat home rom both his mother and his grandmother. If you watch his cooking programs, you will see that he a pro at not wasting a thing in the kitchen
When you use veggie scraps for broth it is good to strain them. You eat with your eyes first and some boiled bits are not appetizing. It should go without saying that rotten or moldy bits should not be cooked with, off to the compost pile they go.
Or you can make a little bag out of a large handkerchief and tie up your scraps into it to add their broth to your dish. Afterwards if not greasy you can compost or feed to the chickens.
Chicken fat as Smaltz is an acquired taste. I find keeping some to bait traps for pests useful. The rat trap known as the stairway to heaven works well with chicken fat bait.
Interesting Topic , i would not recommending using anything pork related.
I’m wondering why no pork
Torah law ?
Later Jesus sais ” all things are made good”
MAT 15:11
It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.
Never said it but you can misquote Paul all you want
Do not think that I came to destroy the Torah or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to complete. For truly, I say to you, till the heaven and the earth pass away, one yod or one tittle shall by no means pass from the Torah till all be done.
Mattithyahu (Matthew) 5:17-18 TS2009
The law is forever
You can also recycle certain veggies another way. The crown of celery and lettuce and the bottoms of scallions can be rooted and will regrow. I’ve also regrown subpar beets for the greens.
While I do make soup, etc., for people, most of my scraps go to a soup for the dogs and cats that I put over their food. A lot of other things go to the chickens. Egg shells are especially appreciated.
We have very little real waste, mostly splintery bones after they’ve been used to make broth or soup. In my experience, they don’t compost well, either.
And whowouldathunk that chickens liked onions…?
My chickens will eat most anything?? Spaghettis , Halloween pumpkins, grass cluppings
I save vegetable scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer, when it is full I put it in a pot with water and make vegetable stock. I can it in quart jars, in a pressure canner so that I have it whenever I need it. I also do that with the left over parts of chickens or turkeys, sometimes other meats. It is nice not having to go to the store for stock when I want to make a soup or gravy.
I do most of these, and my chickens and compost pile both still get lots. My latest attempt is boiling down the cores and peels from apples to try to render the pectin. This year I’m taking my liquid and freeze drying it to see if that works better than trying to cook away a gallon of water.
Valerie, I am not sure just making a guess, but I bet it is harder and costs more to freeze dry away a gallon of water than to boil it away. If I am freeze drying soup I keep it as thick as I can in the pot without scorching it before it goes to the FD.
This year I took apple peelings and made apple jelly from them. The prettiest pink apple jelly I have ever seen!
I also save my bread crusts in the freezer and when I get enough of them I make them into crumbs to use in meatballs, meatloaf and for breading on other meats. I also use the crusts to make croutons, stuffing, and bread pudding.
Apple cider vinegar can be made from apple cores & peels too, if you want.
Great tip! 🙂 Maybe a good idea for a new topic. Thank you ampenny.
I use celery leaves in salad, along with the stock. Also, I have dried the leaves and used as a dried herb.
After butchering deer, I have rendered the trimmings for suit and cracklings. I mix in peanut butter and bird seed and feed the birds in a suit feeder.
Broccoli and cauliflower stems make dog treats for some dogs. I have had a couple that really loved chunks of the stems.
I probably would rate a C- regarding using scraps …. but as a single man, while cooking for myself, I don’t eat enough pork, chicken or beef in a month to store enough fat to use it before spoiling. I am really cautious regarding using skins of most fruit, and ends of many vegetables, as we all know that anything not home grown is likely grown with pesticides, and coated with who knows what, to stay fresh looking and more appealing to the consumer. Washing prior to use might take some of that away … on smooth surfaces, but on leaves on the ends of celery, at the stem area of say an apple, the stem area of a pepper? I usually cut off the ends, skin the fruit and throw the scraps away. The exception of course is potato’s … a good hard scrubbing, can get into the recesses.
It’s my understanding that potatoes, unless organic, are one of the worst for field chemicals. They are sprayed just prior to harvest to get the green plant parts to dry up but, in that the plant is still alive & sucking up the moisture that touches them, the chemicals are all inside the potato as well as on the surface of the skin. We don’t eat a lot of potatoes & what we do, I most often use organic. Even then there is still a big possibility of contamination of organic crops no matter how hard the farmer tries to avoid it.
Growing up our mom always made soup from bone’s. Usually after a holiday the Turkey the bone’s were cooked with a potato, onion, celery. Then after it had cooked long enough she strained it & us kids fought over the vegetables, except the onion. Then she would pick over the bone’s for the meat . If we were lucky she would make ” rival ” soup it is so good.
CK Garlisch