No Waste Cooking

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RealPerson
Posts: 875
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2012 4:33 pm

No Waste Cooking

Post by RealPerson »

I don't like wasting food related to food preparation. Not at issue here is food wasted due to spoiling in the refrigerator. E.g.: cutting off the tough ends of asparagus before cooking. We compost, but that still feels like a waste.

I recently heard an interview with a well known chef who uses every bit of food in the kitchen. For example: make an asparagus stock to create other dishes. He mentioned a recipe involving used coffee grinds. His ideas seemed creative and quite good. But as a chef, he can devote all kinds of time to these projects, plus use rare ingredients that most of us don't have readily available. And, of course, he has a cookbook to sell.

So when it comes to a low-waste kitchen, what resources are available to use typical kitchen waste, adhering to the following criteria:
- must use (nearly) everything that enters a kitchen
- must be relatively simple strategies, that fit into a regular person's lifestyle
- do not use rare or expensive ingredients
- no need to buy a cookbook
- produces food that people actually eat
- makes food for human consumption, so no chicken feed suggestions

thrifty++
Posts: 1171
Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 3:46 pm

Re: No Waste Cooking

Post by thrifty++ »

I was reading a couple of days ago that you can dramatically increase the lifetime of many types of fruit and vegetables by removing any contact with air. So I am going to stock up on snap lock bags for storage.

Myakka
Posts: 122
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 3:39 am

Re: No Waste Cooking

Post by Myakka »

My usual technique for no waste cooking is close to ffj's idea except that for me the broth making becomes part of the cooking process.
For example, today, I boiled some eggs to make hard-boiled eggs. Then I scooped them out of the water and put potatoes in. When the potatoes were done I scooped them out and put some sausages into the water...
Now I have lots of food for the next week and will save the broth that is the byproduct of the whole process for either making soup or cooking something like rice in it. The broth is probably going into the freezer until that point in time arrives.

Toska2
Posts: 420
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:51 pm

Re: No Waste Cooking

Post by Toska2 »

I "peel" root vegetables with steel wool. Boiled vegetable water goes to make rice or lentils.


Some products invite waste. Pineapple, mangos bananas, pork chops (high bone content makes too much broth)

I'm more worried about packaging.

vexed87
Posts: 1521
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:02 am
Location: Yorkshire, UK

Re: No Waste Cooking

Post by vexed87 »

100% waste free is hard to achieve, so I don't bother, instead I prefer to focus on minimisng plastic packaging etc and sending as little to landfill as possible, sometimes I don't put the bins out for collection for a month or two, and even then, they are rarely full. I don't worry about food wastage too much if it is compostable because as mentioned above, it goes towards building my own garden's soil fertility, the nutrients invested here will feed my family long into the future. We eat so little meat (rotting meat attracts rats), that it rarely is wasted. left over fat is my biggest waste. Haven't put much thought into how I could deal with it, the suggestion of feeding combo of cooking oil and meat fats to the dog seems plausible, not sure it's good for fido in the long run though.

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