Confident Cook Tip: Don’t Throw That Away!
Those of you who know me would agree that I’m not a frugal person. I’ve never clipped a coupon in my life. My taste is more Neiman Marcus than Old Navy. And I have a serious Starbucks habit. But, in the kitchen, l’m like Wimpy from the old Popeye cartoons: “I hates waste.” Over the years, I have developed several little kitchen habits because I can’t bear to throw out perfectly good ingredients. Here are four of my favorite:
- Save the ends of loaves of bread to make fresh bread crumbs: I don’t know about you, but no one in my family, including me, will eat the ends of a loaf of bread. I’m not quite sure what our reasoning is other than that the ends look weird. But it seems a shame to throw out two otherwise perfectly fine pieces of bread for aesthetic reasons. So, when I get to the end of a loaf of bread, I stash the ends that no one wants in the freezer. When I am making a recipe that calls for fresh bread crumbs, like meatloaf or zucchini gratin, I thaw a few of these end pieces and then pulse them in the Cuisinart to make bread crumbs. Fresh bread crumbs can get moldy pretty quickly, so try not to make more than you need, but if you do, you can freeze the bread crumbs too.
- Save Parmesan rinds for soups and risotto: one of the more expensive items in my refrigerator, and maybe yours too, is the hunk of imported Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. The nutty taste of real Parmesan cheese is certainly worth the price and I grate it into everything from pasta to omelets to coating for chicken cutlets. But at those prices, I don’t want to waste any of it. So, when I have grated all the usable cheese off the rind, I wrap the rinds up in plastic and stash them in the freezer. Every time I make minestrone, pasta e fagioli, or risotto, I take one of the Parmesan rinds out of the freezer and toss it in my pot. It adds another layer of flavor to your dish. Just be careful not to serve the rind to anyone.
- Vegetable trimmings and chicken bones: If you look past the odd pieces of bread and Parmesan rinds in my freezer, you will likely find plastic bags of vegetable trimmings and chicken bones wrapped up in foil. I save these things for making chicken stock. Please don’t think that I am a kitchen snob who only uses homemade chicken stock. To the contrary, I use canned chicken broth for a lot of my everyday cooking, but for recipes where the broth is the feature, only homemade stock will do. When I roast a whole chicken, or chicken parts on the bone, I save the bones and freeze them. Also, when I chop certain aromatic vegetables — such as leeks, celery, carrots, fennel or parsnips — I save and freeze the larger (and cleaner) trimmings. Then, one afternoon, when I know I won’t be leaving the house, I take all the bones and the veggie trimmings out of the freezer and throw them in the stock pot. I’ll add an onion, maybe a carrot, salt and peppercorns, and at least twelve cups of water. To make the stock, just boil that mixture for a while without stirring too much — although you should skim off any yucky foam that accumulates. After two hours or so, take out all the bones and veggies and discard them. Then simmer the broth — uncovered so it continues to reduce — for a few more hours until it tastes rich enough to you. I just love how this process makes something rich and delicious out of bones and scraps that you would otherwise throw away. By the way, I always refrigerate or freeze my homemade chicken stock. The fat from the chicken will naturally congeal at the top and you can skim it off, so your stock will not be greasy.
- Egg yolks and egg whites: Every so often, I find myself making a recipe that calls for egg yolks or egg whites, rather than the whole egg. For example, this winter, I had fun making lemon and lime curds with the gorgeous Meyer lemons and Key limes that I found at my local Whole Foods. Citrus curd is absolutely delicious served with berries or pound cake. The curd recipe I used, which came from the fabulous canning blog Food In Jars, called for six egg yolks. I simply could not throw out all those egg whites, so after separating the yolks, I saved the whites in a plastic container and stuck them in the fridge. Egg whites happen to be a great thing to have if there is a dieter in your house, and this winter, the dieter in my house was my husband. Egg whites, scrambled or in a frittata, make a filling, low-calorie breakfast. Or, if your dieter has a sweet tooth, you can use your egg whites to make meringues. My husband was delighted to discover that it took something like sixteen small meringues to equal one Weight Watchers point. Making those meringues for him was my atonement for all those jars of lemon curd, which, with six egg yolks and an entire stick of butter per pint, is definitely not diet food. Not surprisingly, I ended up giving most of the jars away. But, what if your recipe calls for egg whites instead of yolks and for some insane reason you aren’t interested in using the yolks to make lemon curd? Here’s another idea: You can mix egg yolks into your part-skim ricotta cheese mixture when making manicotti, stuffed shells or lasagna. The yolks help thicken the filling so that it doesn’t make your baked pasta dish watery, plus they add a little extra nutrition.
You may be thinking to yourself that none of these tips is exactly earth-shattering, and I don’t disagree. Most of what I’ve written seems fairly obvious to me. But who knows? Maybe some of you have been throwing out the ends of your loaves of bread all this time without giving it a second thought. And if you have a brilliant, or obvious, thrifty kitchen habit that I didn’t list here, please share it. I still might have some room left in my freezer.
Those are all great ideas! I hadn’t thought about using the bread “heels” for crumbs. Very resourceful.
Excellent tips. I’m going to start saving my parmesan-reggiano rinds.
Kelly, the bread heel! That was the word I was looking for. Duh.
Marketing Mommy, thanks for stopping by!
Those are all really smart ideas. My brother (who is an excellent cook) recently made me a big container of minestrone soup. It was amazing. I eat every bit of it — including something that I thought tasted sort of like a dumpling. When I asked him how he made it, he told me that he used a Parmesean rind — which he apparently forgot to remove and I ate. Yuck. The soup was still pretty amazing though.
Caitlin, that’s so funny! I am terrified that I will serve the rind to someone one of these days.
Great tips! I started saving my bread ends, but now I have fridge full of them and I need more recipes that need breadcrumbs. What will you be doing with all that yummy Meyer lemon curd? Sounds so delicious!
Cindy, I too seem to have a surfeit of bread crumbs. I basically only use them in meatloaf and gratins, and those are both winter dishes, so my collection will surely grow over the summer.
The lemon curd is terrific with berries or pound cake. I gave most of the jars away since it is so fattening!