Food waste is a major problem in the US and it has skyrocketed in the past few years.
Here are some shocking facts: About 80 billion lbs of food was thrown away last year.
That’s estimated to be about 30-40 percent of the entire US food supply, and equates
to 219 pounds or $1600 worth of waste per person.
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Reducing food waste is in everyone’s interest, from chefs to home cooks to the environment.
You can cut down on it by getting creative with leftovers from cooking.
These include things like peels, crusts, stems, and carcasses.
And in today’s video, we will tell you about the best ways to use food scraps.
From feeding animals, making dips, pickles, soups to Vinegar and more, watch till the
end to learn about all of them.
Candy Citrus Peels: Citrus peels are often discarded, but they don’t have to be.
These peels can be candied, used as a drink garnish, or added to infused water.
Alternatively, zest your peels before using the citrus fruit and place the zest in the
freezer to be used later in baked goods.
You can also sprinkle it on yogurt or oatmeal.
Have you ever used citrus peels?
How did you use it?
Tell us quickly down below in the comments section!
Feed Animals: You can boil some vegetable scraps, bones and bits of meat such as chicken
innards to make healthy food for your pup.
Just make sure to check that the food is safe for animals to eat.
Veggies like onions can be harmful to dogs.
Animals like bunnies, hamsters, chicken and ducks also need greens and other vegetable
scraps in their diets.
If you don’t have animals yourself, find out if anyone else in your area, like a farmer
or an animal shelter could use food scraps to feed animals.
Stocks and Broths: You can save and freeze scraps like beef bones or chicken carcasses,
onion peels, carrot and celery stems for a delicious homemade stock.
Once you’ve accumulated enough, throw them in a pot and boil for a few hours.
Scraps like carrot peels, onion skins, herb stems, and mushroom stems can be used to create
a vegetable stock.
You’ll want to save onion and garlic skins to add a punch of flavor to soups, sauces,
stocks, and braises, too.
You can use seafood shells, such as shrimp shells, to make seafood stock, chicken bones
to make chicken stock, and even combine bones from different kinds of meat, such as chicken,
pork chops, and steaks, to make a generic meat stock.
Don’t throw away those Parmesan rinds, either.
They make a delicious broth and enrich soups.
Toast Spread: Have leftover cheese nubs from a cheese board or macaroni and cheese?
Use them to make a fromage fort.
Take 1/2 pound of assorted cheese pieces and blitz them in a food processor with garlic,
dry white wine, black pepper, and salt.
This ultrasimple, fast spread is delicious on crackers or melted on toast.
Desserts And Dressings: Mushy, browning fruit may seem to be no good for eating, but it’s
actually the best kind of fruit for making desserts.
Cut off any blemishes and cook the fruit with a little sugar and lemon juice and you have
a great filling for pies, crisps and cobblers.
You can also turn those mushy peaches into a peach glaze.
Just roast and blend with sweet chili sauce, roasted onion, garlic, salt, pepper and your
favorite herb, be it basil or cilantro.
Put it in a squeeze bottle and voila!
You can drizzle it on fish, chicken, veggies or use as a dressing for salad.
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Cocktails: You can use egg whites and the water you used to cook pasta to make a waste-free
cocktail.
Take one egg white and about 1 ounce of pasta water along with bitters, fresh lemon juice
and bourbon.
You can also make a lime cordial that has lime zest and celery root scraps among its
ingredients.
Or try “Mano De Chango”, which is a hybrid of a margarita and a paloma which uses guava
pulp that may have otherwise gone to waste.
Salads: Many greens from the tops of your veggies are edible and can be used in a variety
of ways.
You can take carrot tops and turn them into a pesto.
You can also use beet tops as part of your salads.
You can also toss them into smoothies, soups, stews, or whatever other use you can think
of.
Just be sure to cut them off your vegetables when you get home from the store, otherwise,
the vegetables will go bad sooner.
Dips: Most people take the leaves off herbs and toss out the stems— but that’s not
necessary!
Use your softer stems from herbs like basil, parsley, and cilantro in whatever dip you
are making.
You can add the whole stalk of basil to pesto, for example, or blend in a whole stalk of
cilantro into your salsa.
It adds extra nutrients and allows you to utilize the whole plant.
Woody stems like rosemary and thyme can be added in small quantities to soups, beans,
and sauces to infuse them while they cook.
Then they may be removed before serving.
Pickles: After you eat the last pickle in the jar, don’t pour that juice down the
drain.
Instead, throw any other vegetable in the brine and restart the pickling process.
You can use a variety of veggies like canned green beans, artichokes, onions, cucumbers,
and even hard boiled eggs.
If you don’t want to pickle anything, chug that pickle juice to help cure a wicked hangover.
Baked Bread And Croutons: If that loaf of good bakery bread loses its freshness after
a day or two, do what the Italians do.
Halve the loaf crosswise, drizzle it with good olive oil and rub it with a halved ripe
tomato.
Season the bread with salt and pepper, wrap in foil and bake until warm.
You can also use the ends of the loaf to make croutons.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Remove crusts from stale bread slices.
Brush bread on both sides with melted butter.
Cut the slices up into small cubes.
Sprinkle it with garlic salt.
Arrange cubes on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until browned.
Let it cool.
Store croutons in a covered container or plastic bag.
You can serve it with soups or salads.
Roasted Potato Peels: It's not required to peel the skins off potatoes — in fact, they're
included in a lot of great recipes.
But if you're making something like mashed potatoes, you're going to have a lot of leftover
peels, which you can roast to make delicious chips
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a layer of paper towel.
Drain the peels and tip onto the paper towel-lined baking sheet.
Dry the peels thoroughly, then discard the paper towel.
Pour over the butter, oil, kosher salt, pepper, paprika and oregano and toss.
Roast, stirring once, until crisp and golden, about 20 minutes.
Tip the peels into a serving dish, sprinkle over the chives and sea salt and toss.
Potatoes may have gotten a bad rap because of their high carb content, but they are actually
very good for you.
Learn more about its health benefits by watching “Eat Boiled Potatoes Everyday For 1 Week,
See What Happens To Your Body”
Now back to Innovative ways to use food scraps and stop waste.
Soups: Every money savvy restaurant chef knows this one: use what didn’t sell yesterday
to make today’s soup.
Roasted chicken on Sunday night?
Chicken soup on Monday.
And where soup is concerned, let your imagination run wild.
If it tasted good in one presentation like a roast, it would taste good in a soup.
Just add broth.
And it’s not just roasts, bones and chicken carcasses that make great soups.
Got some leftover lasagna that’s not quite enough to feed everyone?
Make lasagna soup.
And if you find the celery is droopy, carrots are rubbery and onions are sprouting, it’s
time to make vegetable soup.
Infusions: You can use fruit peels to make delicious flavor-infused olive oils, liquors,
or water.
The peels or zests of oranges, lemons, grapefruits, lime, and tangerines work the best, but feel
free to experiment.
The longer you leave the peel in the substance, the stronger the flavor will be.
Garden Use: If you want to grow your own plant, you can use the ends, pits and seeds of many
different produce.
This includes the tops of pineapples, the seeds of lemons, and the pits of plums, peaches
and avocados.
Be patient though because these plants can take years to bear fruit, but it will be well
worth the wait.
You can also compost all fruit and vegetable scraps, even if they’re rotten.
These include egg shells, old bread products and countless other items.
Compost is one of the best ways to fertilize soil for gardening because it’s free and
all natural.
After it provides you with the caffeine necessary for survival, leftover coffee grounds are
still incredibly useful.
They serve as an extremely effective fertilizer in potted plants and gardens, a super flavorful
component of homemade steak rubs, a base for homemade java-scented air fresheners, and
an assortment of other purposes.
Vinegar: You can use fruit scraps to make scrap vinegar.
While Apple cider vinegar might be more popular, you can use scraps from other fruit, such
as pears or pineapples as well.
To make this, fill a jar with the scraps, add a spoonful of sugar and pour water just
to cover.
Now, secure it with a lid or cloth.
Stir daily, wait and then strain.
The naturally occurring bacteria on the fruit will transform the fruity water to slightly
alcoholic, then vinegary.
At that point strain the vinegar and use it.
While these are some great ways to stop food waste, there are ones that should never be
wasted.
Learn more about these by watching:
20 Nutritious Foods You Should Be Eating Every Day
Or
12 Healthiest Foods You Should Eat In The Morning
These 2 videos will definitely help you pick the foods that are best for your health . So
go ahead and watch either one or both of them for maximum benefits.
What’s the most creative way that you’ve used food scraps?
Let us know in the comments section below!