How to use up leftovers

What to do with the usual suspects

Stale bread

Breadcrumbs, croutons, panzanella, French toast, bread sauce, bread-and-butter pudding, or blended into a soup for body.

Roast chicken carcass

Stock, always. Three hours of doing nothing produces the best thing in your freezer.

Cooked vegetables

Blend into a soup with stock, fold into a frittata, or fry into bubble and squeak.

Cooked rice

Fried rice, which genuinely requires cold rice. Cool and refrigerate it promptly and use within a day.

Herb stalks and ends

Salsa verde, pesto, chimichurri, or into a stock.

Cheese ends

Grate and freeze for cooking. Parmesan rinds go into soups and stocks.

Wine

Freeze in ice cube trays for sauces and braises.

Overripe fruit

Bananas into banana bread, berries into compote, everything else into a crumble.

Bacon and meat fat

Strain and keep it. Roast potatoes cooked in it are better than any other kind.

The dishes that exist for this

• Frittata or tortilla — takes almost any cooked vegetable and any cheese.
• Soup — takes almost anything, and blending hides an unpromising combination entirely.
• Fried rice or a noodle stir-fry — takes cold cooked grains, small amounts of protein and any vegetable.
• A traybake or gratin — takes leftover roast vegetables and cheese sauce.
• Pasta bake — takes leftover ragù, cooked pasta and whatever cheese is in the fridge.
• Toasted sandwich — takes cheese ends, cold meat and chutney, and is better than any of its parts.
• Curry or dal — takes tired vegetables and hides their tiredness in spice.
• Crumble — takes any fruit past its best.

Wasting less in the first place

• Shop for a plan, not for a fridge that looks full. Most waste is bought, not created.
• Keep a "eat first" shelf or box at eye level in the fridge, for things approaching their limit.
• Store things properly — herbs in water, leaves dry, bread in a bin rather than the fridge. See how to store ingredients.
• Freeze in portions before things turn, rather than after. Bread, milk, cheese, herbs, stock, wine and cooked pulses all freeze well.
• Learn the difference between "best before" and "use by". Best before is about quality and is often conservative; use by is about safety and should be respected. The Food Standards Agency explains the distinction and is worth reading once.
• Cook the whole vegetable — broccoli stalks, cauliflower leaves, carrot tops, beetroot leaves and chard stems are all good food that routinely goes in the bin.

The habit that matters more than any recipe

Most food waste is not created at the end of a meal; it is bought at the beginning of the week and then quietly forgotten. The single most effective change is to look in the fridge before shopping rather than after, and to buy for a plan.

The second is to move things that need using to the front, at eye level, in a box or on a designated shelf. Waste is overwhelmingly a visibility problem: things rot at the back of a shelf because nobody saw them, not because nobody wanted them.

The third is to cook one deliberately flexible meal a week — a frittata, a soup, a fried rice, a traybake — whose entire job is to absorb whatever is left. Building that into the routine does more than any amount of ingenuity applied at the last minute.

Common questions