For years I’ve been using the same spreadsheet to track our favorite recipes to use up food scraps. Whether your reasons are motivated by budget or the environment, using up food scraps is just a smart practice to embrace in your kitchen. In the article below we share our favorite recipes to use up food scraps broken down by sweet, savory, and everything in between.
Recipes To Use Up Food Scraps
Challenge yourself to eliminate food waste from your kitchen. You’ll be delighted by delicious results!
Recipes To Use Up Breads
Bread pudding! How I love it! Savory, cheesy, warm and comforting. And so versatile. Hearty breads stand-up better in bread puddings. Think sourdough, crusty french breads, or bagels. Have fun experimenting with different cheeses, herbs and meats.
Panade (similar to bread pudding)
Bread crumbs (homemade)
Mix into meatballs or meatloaf (beef) or meatloaf (turkey)
Recipes To Use Up Leftover Rice
Leftover rice is extremely versatile. It can be used as a thickener in soups, added to ground meat to make one pound go further, or made into a sweet, comforting bowl of rice pudding.
Stuffed tomatoes, peppers or cabbage rolls
Roman Rice-Stuffed Tomatoes (Pomodori al Riso) Recipe served with potatoes
Arancini (Fried mozzarella stuffed rice balls)
Rice pudding is one of my favorite desserts. One of the most interesting things about rice pudding is to see how it’s made differently from culture to culture. Everywhere from Mexico, to Eastern Europe, to the Middle East has their own version of rice pudding infused with flavors that are representative of their local traditions.
Milchreis (German Rice Pudding)
Lebanese Rice Pudding (Riz bi Haleeb)
Recipes To Use Up Veggie and Meat Scraps
Veggie peelings, odds and ends, meat bones, corn cobs, herb stalks, and parmesan cheese rinds can all be turned into savory, incredible homemade stocks and broths. Once you start making broths and stocks at home it’s hard to go back to store bought.
Keep a resealable bag or container in your freezer that you can add scraps to until you accumulate enough for a batch of broth. I keep two in my freezer – one for bones and one for produce.
Fun fact: you can pickle almost anything! The more you do it, the better it gets. As you figure out what ratios of sweet, salt and spice that you like, it’s easy to tweak recipes to suit your preferences.
Pickled red onions (we always have these in the fridge!)
Use up herbs
Falafel are great for using up garbanzo beans, cilantro and parsley stems. Falafel can be baked or fried. I love serving them wrapped in fresh pita, drizzled with zhoug or tahini sauce, and sprinkled with red onion.
While I’ve linked to a recipe above that I like, I urge you to search online and read through a few more falafel recipes. Falafel are popular across the Middle East and most countries have their own slightly different version. Sometimes it can take testing a few recipes to find the style you like best.
Flavored Salts make an awesome gift!
Marinated cheese. It’s a thing. A delicious thing. Check out marinated mozzarella balls or marinated feta.
Chimichurri and Zhough sauce are fresh, bright and packed with flavor. While traditionally served with meat dishes, I love to use them as a topping on poached eggs, falafels, or mixed with mayonnaise as a topping on black bean burgers.
Turn it into a meal
Eggy dishes like quiche (egg pie with crust) or frittata (egg pie without crust) are both easy to make and great recipes to use up food scraps like small amounts of meat, fresh herbs, or grated or cubed cheeses.
The tortilla española, an egg and potato dish, is great for using up an abundance of eggs or potatoes. While not typical, you could definitely throw in some fresh herbs to give it extra flavor. Personally, I always add a bit of paprika.
Roll it up in a tortilla
Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, and taquitos are all delicious. Growing up in California we ate Mexican food, or Californian style Mexican food, at least twice a week. Nowadays, when we have extra rice, beans, roasted veggies, or meat in the fridge we naturally turn to corn or flour tortillas.
Instead of listing links to specific recipes I’m sharing links to some of my favorite Mexican food blogs. There are 100 fillings you could add to tacos or burritos. I recommend looking at the recipes on these blogs for inspiration and maybe making a sauce or two. In my home we always keep pickled red onions, sour cream and chipotle pepper in adobo in the fridge. The chipotle can be mixed with mayonnaise or sour cream and a spritz of lime for a super easy sauce bursting with flavor. And the pickled onion and jalapeño add crunch and tang.
Isabel Eats for clear directions and mouth watering pictures, Dora’s table for excellent vegan recipes, and Mexico In My Kitchen for an abundance of inspiration.
Too many tortillas on hand? Try making migas or chicken tortilla soup!
Fry it into a fritter
Most things can be mixed with some egg, seasoning, and breadcrumbs or rice and fried in a patty shape. This is one of those really simple solutions that I use when I’m tired and drained of any more creative ideas. Here’s a veggie scrap fritters recipe to get you started. Veggie fritters are also a perfect way to use up those winter root vegetables that you get in your CSA box and have no idea what to do with. Lookin’ at you rutabaga.
Salmon patties are lovely served with a lemony aioli. You can substitute other kinds of leftover or canned fish.
The great catch-all: soups, stews and chilis
Chili (vegetarian) or Chili (meat)
Use up meat drippings and make luscious gravy to smother some biscuits in.
Recipes To Use Up Sweet Odds and Ends
Sweet bread pudding is one of my favorite options for a sweeter breakfast. I generally cut back on the sugar in my bread pudding. Bread pudding recipes all have the same basic ingredients so find one that you like and can customize. In place of bread I like to use stale bagels, morning buns or cinnamon rolls to add extra flavor and texture. One of my favorite additions to bread pudding is a combination of raisins and diced apple.
When you have an abundance of strawberries or other fruits that bake well I highly recommend making this cake: Strawberry Brown Butter Snacking Cake.
British Bread and Butter Pudding is a fun twist on the more classic bread pudding listed above.
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