11 Tips How To Reduce Food Waste At Kitchen

        When we cook wings, no purpose to bake or fry the tips of the wings because nothing to eat really there. I never throw away chicken wings tips. The most common way in my kitchen, I use it for chicken stock. The best stock is made out of mixed parts of a chicken and wings tips are a great addition to bring richness and more flavor to chicken stock.

        When we buy chicken we have giblets inside often time. It wrapped in paper inside the bird. Giblets are great for a chicken stock with a mix of chicken bones but don’t use a liver in stock. I freeze liver and when buy a pound of chicken liver to cook just add it. Giblets add in the same time with other chicken parts and cook as usually do with chicken.

       We cook usually a very large turkey for Thanksgiving. The carcass is so big and most of the time we throw it away. Just recently I heard turkey carcass can be used to make a good stock. I love the idea to reuse turkey leftovers for the stock, so last time we cooked a turkey, I saved carcass.  I didn’t try yet to make a stock from roasted turkey bones. However, my American part of my family told me it is good.  So I am sharing this tip too and going to update when trying to make myself.

       Large pieces of beef much better bargain but it has so many leftovers. Trims and bones from the meat I always collect and use to make broth. I use also silverskin with meat on it from tenderloin what you see in the photo above. Of course, silverskin itself has no flavor and adds nothing to the broth. However, when I trim it some meat still will be there, so I add it as additional meat when making a broth.

       Trims from the meat we can grind and use to make meatballs and much more.

         I love to use vegetable waste for my stock or broth! It maybe takes a little more time to prepare vegetables for the freezer but it worth it. It is so easy to use, everything is clean and ready. Just add vegetable scrap to water with meat or make rich vegetable stock. Perfect if you thaw vegetables. However, I personally skip this step. Especially, for soup with many flavors. If I am going to make stock or broth for a very light soup with a few ingredients, I am going to use roasted fresh vegetables to bust extra flavors. Otherwise, stock flavored with vegetable scrap is working just great. Try to use vegetable scrap for broth, if you are never done it before.

        What vegetables do I freeze for stocks? I freeze onion scraps, carrot, parsley, and dill stems, leek’s greens.

         When I use onions in cooking so much waste getting from peeling onions. Can we use it for something in cooking? Yes! I use skin and other cuts of the onion using for stocks or broth. When I chop an onion the tip part always hard and it impossible to cooking evenly if we chopped with fine layers. I use only fine layers of the onion when cook soup, salad, or other dishes. Because I keep the onion tip cuts for stock, I very generously cut it off. The onion skin actually is going to color our stock slightly but if you add a lot, it can give a stock deep and rich color. I personally in most cases don’t like to use a lot of onion skin for my stocks. The tip with the remaining roots (see on the photo below) I don’t keep because too hard to clean from the soil.

Scrap of onion use for stock

Another way how to use onion skin to color Easter eggs. A very healthy way to color eggs. If we use a lot of skin we can get a very rich red-brown color like the one in the photo below. I remember my grandmother was always collecting onion peels. In the modern world, we use mostly fancy store coloring. Just we need to remember. Eggs have tiny pores and coloring will be getting inside, be sure coloring you use food proof.

      We can use parsley or other leaves or flowers to create designs on eggs and make them fancy for Easter Holiday!

         Before peel a carrot I clean it with a brush very well and maybe can leave it in water for a few minutes, so the soil will be easy to wash out. This way when I peel a carrot, I will be sure my carrot peel is very clean and confident to use for making stock. I use very seldom freeze carrot peel because of cleaning complications. However, baby carrots often end up in my freezer. For example, I buy baby carrots for a snack in large bags but not always we can able to consume the whole bag. Carrots in a short period of time look not so appetizing and dry, but it is perfect to keep for stock or freeze them and use in the future.

        So many soup recipes call only for the white part of the leek. I like to follow original recipes if I am not familiar with them. However, I am not going to throw away the green part of the leek because it will be just a waste of vegetables. 1/3 of a leek are green leaves. I like to use it to make beef broth. I use one leaf for the large pot.

Check great soup recipe with leek and without cream ⇒ Norwegian Cauliflower Soup From Chef Ani

        I freeze my vegetable scraps in ziplock bags because it takes less space in the refrigerator. I always mark bags, so I know where older bags and to use them first.

      A most clever way to save overripe bananas is to freeze them and use them in a banana bread recipe. The best banana bread is from frozen overripe bananas! When I tried for the first time, was very skeptical, frozen bananas look not appetizing at all. Banana bread came out so moister and so delicious! It is the secret perfect banana bread. Another good way to use bananas to make banana pancakes.

Try yourself this easy recipe ⇒ Recipe And How To Decorate Banana Bread Ideas

     Banana bread freeze just perfectly! I slice it into 2 portions and place it in a ziplock bag. When ready thought it and serve warm with ice cream or without. It is so good!

      Do you have orange peel left? Don’t throw it away! Dry it and use it in your tea! Orange peel is great to make garnishes for beverages and fruit platters. So beautiful flowers from orange peel always a nice touch to fruit platters, especially for a summer party table. Garnishes from orange peel for cocktails fun and easy to make an addition to spice up your evening with friends and family. Inside from orange, we always can use it for juicing, so no wasting food when we make these pretty garnishes.

Read how to make orange flower peel ⇒ 5 Cute And Fancy Ways to Serve Orange and Mandarin

Read how to make a fun cocktail garnish from orange peel ⇒ 5 Lime And Orange Peel Cocktail Garnish Ideas

     From a lemon peel, we can make the pretty flower and garnish fruit platter or seafood platter for example.

Check for more lemon garnish ideas → 11 Easy Lemon Garnish Ideas

When we pouring sour milk in a drain we are pouring our money away! I love to lower our grocery expenses and save money when possible. If milk going sour we can use in a few ways. We can use exactly as buttermilk to make pancakes, biscuits or use in baking goods. Sour milk great substitute for buttermilk. Just remember to adjust recipe because sour milk has more liquid.  Great way to use sour milk is to make cheese. For example, farmer cheese.

I was leaving in a country for a few years in my life and was buying milk from a cow. I know the taste of real milk! I can tell maybe little out of the subject but may you will be interesting to know. Each cow has different milk taste, I knew lady she has a few cows. They have the same food and the same breed but the taste was different from each cow and fat contains too.

        When we make farmer cheese or other cheeses, we have always left whey. Whey can be used to make dough for bread or other baking goods, pancakes, and crapes. Bread much better if we use whey instead of water in a bread recipe.

I personally don’t try but some people use it for fermenting vegetables and marinade meats. I saw some ketchup recipes call for whey.

      Hard cheeses leftovers great to freeze and use in future cooking. Cheese needs to be shredded before place in a plastic bag for freezing. Don’t place pieces of cheese in the freezer because they will turn into crumbs. I use my frozen cheeses mostly for breakfast meals and casseroles. Fresh cheese is more flavorful and tasty than frozen. However, it good to have it in the freezer in case I don’t have any cheese on hand.

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    To keep cheese longer flavorful, use special paper to wrap cheeses! Especially, if you buy expensive cheeses. I did a comparison myself. I kept side-by-side cheese in wax paper and special cheese paper and impressed with the result. You can read more at the bottom of this page ⇒ 7 Tips How To Serve Tete De Moine Cheese

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    To make shredding cheese easier, spray the shredder surface with vegetable oil before start shred cheese. It helps a lot. I tried this tip when have to shred 3 pounds of cheddar on an electric shredder.

        This Holidays we have so much bread left and I cut it and dry. Not much effort but it is so good with soups and no wasting bread. Another way to use stale bread to make stuffing for pork or poultry. From sweet bread leftovers, we can make bread pudding. One of my favorite way to use dry presliced bread to make french toast.

On the photo above. The design on the plate I made from cinnamon powder with a stencil. Check what is the difference between Ceylon cinnamon and cassia. → Cinnamon As A Spice and 17 Ways To Use In Cooking

         We can make croutons from stale bread and use with soup or salad. However, croutons shelf life much shorter than just dry bread. I mostly cut into cubes or slices and dry on very low temperature gradually. Great use the oven heat after baking something. Turn off oven and place bread in but be careful don’t use so hot oven, so easy to burn small pieces of bread. Why I prefer to dry gradually most the time with a large amount of bread? So easy reason! For longer storage is important bread is completely dry. Just basic microbiology, life is where is water or in our case is moisture inside the bread. When we dry bread on high heat, we possibly can toast outside well but inside still has moisture left, so shelf time will be limited compared to natural drying.

         Another solution to use stale bread is homemade bread crumbs. We can use almost any bread or crackers. For example, I use part of a bread slice for fancy toast and what left to keep for bread crumbs. I am sharing a few tips how I store stale bread and why I like a bag from linen, check you might learn something new → Homemade Breadcrumbs Recipe

       When I buy salmon filet, most the time it has skin on it. What can we do with skin and other not really meat salmon parts? Can we use it in cooking? Salmon waste can be used to make great stock. We can use to make stock skin with scales. Scales don’t give a flavor but give a thickness to stock, so don’t remove scales. Fins, bones, and head can be used too. Just remember, very important gills must be removed.

I have a great recipe for salmon stock and salmon soup. Give a try! Read recipe ⇒ Ukha Russian Salmon Soup Recipe

       So many great ways to use leftover wine in cooking! We can flavor with wine sauces, use to flavor some soups, meat dishes, desserts, and much much more. I personally, like to use red wine in beef dishes, light wine in fish dishes, and flavoring cakes. It really makes a difference in dishes, if the recipe calls for wine better add wine! If you worried about alcohol, boil wine separately and after adding it to the dish. Alcohol evaporates very fast after we boil it for a few minutes.

1.    I keep my leftover wine separate in two jars with white (pink) wine and red wine. So handy always have wine on hands to use in my cooking. If a recipe calls for wine, I don’t buy wine, I just use mix wines leftovers from bottles. The mix from different wines is stores very well for months in a refrigerator.
2.    Freeze wine in ice cubes. Frozen wine cubes store in a ziplock bag and use when need it.

      I asked one good chef which wine she can suggest using in cooking. She gave very good advice – use wine what you like to drink. So when we store leftovers from bottles, we always have favorite wines in the mix.

I bought cooking wine one time to give a try to use it. The flavor result nothing even close to wine for drinking.

        Why do I mention eggs leftover on my list? Because some recipes as merengue use a lot of egg whites and yolks will be left. Some recipes, call for yolks only, sauces, or some pastries. What to do with leftover egg whites and yolks? Super simple use, use for breakfast the next day. I read online some people like to freeze eggs. I am going to test this method and will make an update. Another use for eggs yolks use is to make homemade sauce mayonnaise. I know for sure, many classic mayonnaise recipes have only yolks. To make mayonnaise can be tricky but if we know the technology of preparing mayonnaise, we easily can create even own recipe without any problem. Before starting to make homemade mayonnaise I suggest reading my very detailed guide. I used my Russian cooking textbook photo to explain why we need to use kitchen gadgets and a whisk is not the best choice and much more.

Read about ⇒ Traditional Mayonnaise Recipe With Secrets

Only eggs yorks Aioli mayonnaise recipe from my cooking book “The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook 2001-2017”

2 large eggs yolks

1 grated fine garlic clove

4 teaspoon lemon juice

1/8 teaspoon sugar

3/4 cup olive oil

Ground white pepper to taste

       We have left a lot of cold cuts from this holiday. What to do with it? Leftover meat as ham, bologna, or other cold cuts meats I freeze for future use. The leftover meat I cut into strips or dice and freeze in 1 or 2 portions in a ziplock bag. Leftover meat is great to use in an omelet or with fry eggs for a breakfast. Because pieces are small it doesn’t take long to thaw on a skillet.

      Another great use in soups or garnish a soup. For example, ham is a great addition to peas soup.

         I like to use the bottom of the celery for stocks and good part in cooking or eat as is, everybody knows. Another very creative way to make from this vegetable useful is to make a pretty flower for your party or just impress your family. So easy technique without any carving and special garnish tools. Great use for any vegetable platter or party finger food decoration. Take a look at this page with many photo examples →  4 Easy Celery Garnish Ideas

     The tomato rose is so impressive garnish idea and it made from tomato skin! If we use tomato for cooking in sauces, for example, we can use tomato skin to decorate vegetable platter or other dishes.

Check this easy technique → Easy And Cute Tomato Garnish Ideas

          I love coffee! I like to make a lot in the morning. However, some coffee I always have left in my coffee maker. The best way to use it in my opinion, just make ice cubes and use to make iced coffee. The iced coffee cubes don’t dilute coffee as regular ice cubes.