How you can use your food leftovers creatively and deliciously

Did you know that one third of all foods produced is thrown away? We all probably know it too well when we prepared a portion of food too big for us to eat at once and it slowly loses its crispness or beautiful color. Even if leftovers often don’t look as appealing as they did at the beginning, they are definitely too good for throwing it away. In today’s blog post we would like to show you how you can use up various food leftovers, integrate them into your breakfast and transform them into new dishes. Because recycling old leftovers is not only sustainable and good for the wallet, but also tastes delicious.

To make it easier for you to keep your food leftovers to a minimum in the future, we have thought of 3 tips with which you can better avoid and reduce food leftovers in the future.

3 tips to avoid and reduce food waste:

1. To better plan your food purchases and quantities, you can create a weekly meal plan. This will not only help you to reduce leftovers but will also contribute to the variety of your food. You can then go shopping with your weekly plan, only buy what is on the list and therefore you can avoid spontaneous purchases.

2. To throw away as little food as possible, you can try out new recipes and find inspiration for new creations. You will be surprised what delicious dishes can be made from only a few leftovers.

3. Already prepared dishes that you’ve cooked too much of you can simply transform further and turn them into new dishes. You can also freeze them and make them last longer, so you can enjoy them later without feeling guilty.

How to turn old food leftovers into a completely new delicious dish

1. Integrate various fruit leftovers into your breakfast

Fruit that has turned brown or is simply no longer as crunchy can be easily integrated into smoothies, for example our Verival Breakfast Shake. You can also turn old fruit into a tasty fruit salad. You can grate old apples and mix them into a cake or muffin dough, which makes your cake nice and juicy.

In general, various fruit leftovers can be used for baking, as the fruit becomes softer during the baking process anyway. You can also easily integrate your fruit leftovers into your warm porridge in the morning; for example, grate or cut old fruit into small pieces and add them to your pot when it comes to the boil.

2. Brown bananas – A natural sweetener

Even bananas that have already turned brown can still be used without hesitation. They are incredibly sweet and are therefore suitable for cooking as well as for baking as a sweetening option. You can crush them with a fork and mix them into the dough for banana bread or other cakes. You can also use brown bananas in muffins or put them in a blender together with some milk or homemade vegetable drink to make banana milk.

3. Turn various vegetables into new dishes

The leftovers of carrots, zucchini or a pumpkin are particularly suitable for further processing in a cake, tart or quiche. You can also prepare summer rolls from various vegetable leftovers.

A bread spread can also be prepared from old leftovers. You will need 300 g of raw vegetable leftovers, 70 g of onions, 40 ml of oil, a teaspoon of tomato paste, half a teaspoon of salt and 3 pinches of pepper. Process the raw vegetable leftovers in a mixer on a high setting. Then add the oil and fry the vegetables on a low temperature for 15 minutes. Then pour your homemade vegetable spread into a small glass and you enjoy it with some bread.

4. Use old bread for some crunch in your soups and salads

Old bread pieces can be cut into small cubes and roasted in the pan with a little butter or oil. This way you can quickly make homemade croutons from the old bread leftovers to go with soups and salads. So even bread that has become hard does not have to end up in the bin under any circumstance.

5. Reinterpreting rice leftovers

When preparing rice, one can easily misjudge the amount that is needed, as it swells up during cooking. Fortunately, the possibilities to prepare rice are very versatile: you can make a rice salad, a rice pan, but also a sweet rice pudding. For a change, you can also make a sweet porridge with rice by mixing the rice with a little milk and adding various spices.

Create a new tasty breakfast from leftovers

You can also prepare a completely new breakfast from various leftovers. You can reuse soft fruit and put it into a crumble or you can make delicious muffins. You can make a tasty porridge from various leftovers such as oat flakes and different seeds and you can also create a Buddha Bowl for breakfast with old vegetable leftovers.

How to preserve your food correctly

To use leftovers, you can also freeze or boil down different fruits and vegetables. Berries, for example, are particularly suitable for this, as they are only in season for about 4 months of the year. You can find out how to 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 it again later to enjoy it.

#verivaluseup Challenge: Together against food waste

We are also striving to reduce our food waste as much as possible and to use up leftovers. If you look in the pantries of many, you can often find food that has been forgotten. In the #verivaluseup Challenge we want to ask you to avoid shopping as much as possible for the next 2 weeks (you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables) and to use up your leftovers so that they don’t end up in the trash. With the motto “on the plate instead of into the bin” we want to set a sign against food waste.

On Instagram, we will guide you through the two weeks of the #verivaluseup Challenge and share our tips & tricks with you and provide you with various inspirations. Be part of it and also set an example by using the hashtag #verivaluseup because we think that food clearly belongs on the plate and not in the bin!

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