Did you know that a third of all food produced ends up in the trash? We all probably know the feeling all too well when our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and various foods slowly lose their crispness or beautiful colour. Even if these foods often no longer look as appealing as they did at the beginning, they are definitely much too good for the bin.
In today's blog post, we would like to show you how you can use up various leftover foods and incorporate them into your breakfast or into new dishes. Using up old leftovers is not only sustainable and good for your wallet, it also tastes delicious.
To make it easier for you to minimise your food waste in the future, we have put together three tips to help you avoid and reduce food waste in the future.
Find out more about sustainability at Verival.
3 tips to avoid and reduce food waste:
- To plan your food shopping and quantities better, you can make a weekly meal plan. This not only helps you to reduce leftovers, but also contributes to the variety of your meals. With your weekly meal plan you can then go shopping with a specific list in mind and thus avoid spontaneous purchases.
- To minimise food waste, you can try out new recipes and look for inspiration for new creations. You'll be surprised what delicious dishes you can conjure up from just a few leftovers.
- For example, you can simply process dishes that you have cooked too much of and turn them into new dishes. You can also freeze them to make them last longer and enjoy them later without feeling guilty.
Turn old leftovers into a whole new delicious dish
1. Various leftover fruits in your breakfast
Fruit that has turned brown or is no longer as crunchy can easily be added to smoothies, for example with our Sport Shake. You can also turn old fruit into a tasty fruit salad. Old apples, for example, can be grated and mixed into cake or muffin dough to make your cake nice and moist. In general, you can always use various fruit scraps in baking, as the fruit becomes softer during the baking process anyway.
You can also easily incorporate your fruit scraps into your morning warm porridge; for example, you can grate or finely chop old fruit and add it to your pot when it boils.
2. Brown bananas – ugly on the outside, beautiful on the inside
You can still use bananas that have already turned brown without hesitation. They are incredibly sweet and are therefore suitable for both cooking and baking instead of a sweetener. For example, you can mash them with a fork and mix them into the dough for banana bread or other cakes. You can also add browned bananas to muffins or blend them with a little milk or homemade plant-based drink to make banana milk.
3. Turn various vegetables into new dishes
Leftover carrots, courgettes or pumpkin are particularly suitable for making cakes, tarts or quiches. You can also use various vegetable scraps to prepare summer rolls. You can quickly and easily prepare a spread from old leftovers.
You will need 300 g of raw vegetable scraps, 70 g onions, 40 ml oil, a heaped teaspoon of tomato paste, half a teaspoon of salt and 3 pinches of pepper. Blend the raw food scraps in a blender on a high setting. Then add the oil and roast the vegetables on a low setting for 15 minutes. Finally, transfer your homemade vegetable spread to a small jar and enjoy!
4. Reuse stale bread
You can cut old bread into small cubes and fry it in a pan with a little butter or oil. This way, you can quickly turn old bread into homemade croutons to go with soups and salads. Even bread that has gone stale doesn't have to end up in the rubbish bin.
5. Reuse leftover rice
It's easy to miscalculate when preparing rice, as it swells during cooking. Fortunately, rice is very versatile: you can use it to make a rice salad, a stir-fry, or a sweet rice pudding. You can also prepare a sweet porridge with rice for a change by mixing the rice with a little milk and adding various spices.
Create a new breakfast from leftovers
You can also prepare a completely new breakfast from various leftovers. Soft fruit can easily be used in the form of a crumble or to make delicious muffins. You can conjure up a delicious porridge from various leftovers of oats, seeds and kernels, and with old vegetable scraps you can create a Buddha Bowl for breakfast.
Verival breakfast – discover it here
It's so easy to make your food last longer
To make use of leftovers, you can also freeze or preserve various fruits and vegetables. Berries, for example, are particularly suitable for this, since our local berries are only in season for about 4 months of the year. You can find out how to best freeze berries here. You don't have to throw away food that has already been cooked if you have prepared too much. You can simply freeze it and defrost and enjoy it at a later date.
