Food Waste is Avoidable
Learn to love and respect your leftovers, and make fried rice
Whenever I hear someone say, “I don’t eat leftovers”, I shudder with sadness at all the missed opportunities for future deliciousness. If like me you’re thinking, “Who doesn’t eat leftovers?”, let me tell you, these people are out there. We may never understand them, but I would like to help them. And if you are one of these people, fear not, I’m writing this for you.
I recently read We Are What We Eat1 by Alice Waters. It is an excellent manifesto, the distillation of Waters’ life’s work—more than 50 years of learning and living by Slow Food values built on stewardship, nourishment, and community. I share these values. So when I came across these words which read as advice, “if you have anything in your life that you feel strongly about, you have no choice but to act”, I decided that I wanted to be more direct in my message about why leftovers deserve your love and attention.
In the United States alone, about 30–40 percent of our entire food supply is wasted every year. My advice to help combat the atrocities of food waste is the same as the recurring sentiment I’ve shared for standing up against the negative impacts factory farming and food processing have on our environment and economy as a whole—avoid purchasing your groceries from industrial supply chains and corporations that treat food as a disposable commodity.
But at the very least, you can make an effort to eliminate food waste at home. Eat your leftovers!
Stepping off of my soapbox and back into the kitchen, here’s what else I have to say: If you think you don’t like leftovers, you’re doing it all wrong. I will indulge you and agree that sometimes reheating an old meal can taste like a sad cover of the beautiful song it was yesterday. But the key to enjoyment is to not think of leftovers as leftovers. You must think of them as ingredients—parts and pieces of a future meal that are already made. Leftovers are full of possibilities and ready to become something new.
It is perhaps important to note here that there are certain dishes that do get better with time, like most braises and stews. The best way to treat these foods is to cook them ahead of time as intentional leftovers, letting the flavors meld together in the refrigerator while the dish rests for a day or two, and then gently reheat them until all those tastes, once individual but now like a chorus, sing.
Plus, making a pot of soup for the week is simply practical if you know you’ll be busy, and most likely it’ll be just as good on day two or three, if not better. If you crave novelty, you can always switch up your sides and toppings to avoid redundancy, making sure to add other meals in between the ones you’ve pre-prepped in order to head off palate fatigue.
But back to my leftovers as ingredients philosophy. I don’t just love leftovers, I make leftovers on purpose. I am part of a two person household, and when the average recipe, or bunch of [insert produce], or pound of [insert protein], typically yields four servings, I deliberately plan to eat some today and save some for later. In my house, if you’re going to make the effort to cook a cup of rice or other grain for a dinner menu, you’d better make two.
While cooking your way towards a dinner, you don’t have to go all the way in assembling your meal so the only option is reheating a leftover plate in its entirety like a TV dinner. You can prep and set aside parts of the whole as building blocks for a new recipe. Or, as I primarily do, reimagine the remaining portions of your menu into the start of something new.
Roasted vegetables you cooked up as a side dish, from potatoes to roasted broccoli, can be the makings of a future frittata. Those extra slices of steak, or unfinished pork chop, are the perfect way to add some protein to a batch of fried rice (which of course uses up your old rice too). Leftover roast chicken or sliced sausages are a wonderful addition to a salad of either lettuce or grains. I would argue beans taste better when refried, and just like your leftover pulled pork or sauteed mushrooms, they’ll make an excellent taco filling or nacho topping. Is there an old saying that goes “pork roast today = carnitas tomorrow”?
With a little bit of broth and/or tomato, almost anything from cooked vegetables to braised meats can be stretched into a “ragu” of sorts for saucing a pasta. I also love to fold roasted vegetables (cauliflower and brussels sprouts work great for this) into mac and cheese for a little health kick in an otherwise artery clogging indulgence. Old bread makes the best french toast, or you can simply make breadcrumbs or croutons for the pantry that will come in handy later. Just like your leftover chicken bones and/or veggie scraps can be turned into broth as the start of a future soup.
Do you catch my drift? It’s nearly impossible to nail the perfect portions every time. Leftovers may be inevitable, but food waste is always avoidable. If you don’t eat it today, save it for tomorrow. And if you find yesterday’s menu unexciting or unappetizing, don’t just reheat, reinvent.
If you’re inspired to hone your kitchen instincts on this topic, I recommend you get to know the work of Tamar Adler, whose most recent title, The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z, is a treasure trove of ideas. You can also find her on Substack writing
.Sort of related, I loved this recent essay by Marian Bull of
on “The Question Of Sustenance”. If you need some help getting out of a rut and finding inspiration and motivation in the kitchen (hint: meal prep AKA premeditated leftovers can help!), this one’s for you.
Make Fried Rice
The secret to making fried rice is a liberal use of fat—it’s called “fried” rice after all. You know how I know this? Because once upon a time, a talented group of chefs, who were alumni of Chez Panisse (the farm-to-table flagship of the aforementioned Alice Waters), went off and opened an excellent restaurant called Ramen Shop in Oakland, California. I was an apprentice butcher working at The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley at the time, from which we supplied a massive amount of lard each week to the Ramen Shop operation.
This was a boon for us, because in a whole-animal butchery it is common to amass more fat from trimming pork chops than you can conceivably sell to your average walk-in, home-cooking customers. Having a restaurant that uses a lot of leftover fat is lovely—I learned this lesson and had equally symbiotic relationships with soap makers and chefs running beef fat fryers in their restaurants a decade later at Primal Supply Meats in Philadelphia.
One day I thought to ask how the kitchen at Ramen Shop was using so much pork lard, to which my boss and mentor replied, “fried rice”.
Fried rice is a great use for your leftover bacon fat. If I’m not using animal fats, I like to use coconut oil for this dish, but any neutral oil will work just fine. When you’re ready to cook, gather your leftover rice (and remember old, dry rice is the key here), an egg or two, a small onion, and any other random vegetables you might have kicking around in the crisper, like a lone carrot from the bunch that was bigger than your latest recipe called for—it’s time this all gets used.
If you have any protein leftovers, like a few slices of last night’s pork chop or steak, perhaps a bit of leftover roast chicken, you’ll want to add that to your rice too. Don’t toss your uneaten bites of pan-fried fish next time you’re too full, or that extra slice of bacon that never got served, no scrap is too scrappy for this project.
Dice up your onion and any other vegetables. Crack the eggs into a bowl and lightly whisk them. Prepare any pre-cooked protein by cubing it up into small pieces. You’ll also want to have your bottles of soy sauce and fish sauce at the ready. Fried rice happens fast so you’ll thank yourself for playing chef and having all your mise en place before setting your pan over a flame.
Heat a large pan (I use my 12-inch cast iron skillet for this because I’m less practiced with a wok, but if you’ve got a wok and the confidence to cook in it, go for it) over medium-high heat with a generous spoonful—a couple tablespoons worth if you’re measuring—of your cooking fat of choice. When it’s just about smoking hot, add your onions and any other veggies, plus a pinch of salt, and saute until they’re starting to soften and brown a bit (I like my veggies to have some crunch in fried rice, so I try not to overcook in this step).
Push all the veggies to one side of your pan, and if it’s not slick and glistening, add another spoonful of fat to the empty side of the pan to be safe, then pour your eggs in. Lightly scramble them, breaking up into pieces as they cook. When there is no more liquid egg, fold the scrambled bits into the veggies, then add your old rice and stir everything to combine and coat in the fat from the pan. Let the whole mixture cook for a few minutes allowing the rice that is touching the hot pan to fry and brown before the occasional stir.
Finally, fold in your reserved proteins and hit the whole pan with a splash of soy sauce and a smaller splish of fish sauce (do not be alarmed at the odor of this fermented fish juice hitting the hot pan. I promise it will taste delicious). Give the rice a stir, taste for seasoning and allow it to fry for another minute or two, with minimal stirring and maximal frying, before serving.
My recommended garnishes if you're feeling fancy include slivered scallions, chopped peanuts, a spoonful of kimchi, or if you like spicy, hot sauce.
Still Hungry?
Here are a few more recommendations on things to consume:
WATCH
If trailers featuring a busted up old Nick Cage (no shade here, I’m a fan) and the synopsis that he plays a truffle hunter whose pig gets stolen didn’t rev you up to watch PIG, same here. But then I recently saw it listed as one of “The 38 All-Time Best Food Movies” and recommended to Brad that we watch it—what a beautiful film it is! A story of love, loss, and the power of food memories. I adored it and hope you do too.
READ
Perhaps it’s that tucking into a story in the cold of winter feels different than it does in the warmth of other seasons, but there seems to be a particular novel each winter that really resonates with me. Last year I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow at the top of the new year and it stuck as a favorite read for a significant part of 2023. This year that book is The Arsonists City, the story of a family that spans generations from Beirut to California exploring themes of love and self-identity, with the ever present character of war. I want to recommend it to every fiction lover I know.
ENGAGE
For the nerds in the front row, I read a lot about sustainable agriculture and often take note of things I want to share with you. The latest news circulating is that the results of the 2022 Farm Census are in and as Marion Nestle put it bluntly on her blog, Food Politics, it is “not an encouraging picture”. This article by Lisa Held on Civil Eats is an excellent summary of the data with takeaways, including this one:
For decades, American farms have been disappearing while those that remain have been growing in size. And between 2017 and 2022, that trend picked up steam… Farm numbers decreased in every size category except one: Those operating 5,000 acres or more. Large farms now control 42 percent of the farmland in the country. From an economic perspective, 75 percent of the country’s total value of agricultural production now comes from farms with $1 million or more in sales.
I’m no longer afraid of sounding like a broken record: We need to directly support small, local farms, or there is a genuine risk they won’t exist anymore. If you didn’t catch my recent essay on being a Locavore, I wrote more about this. Or save yourself the reading time and just head out and shop at your local farmers’ market. I’ll see you there!
As always, thanks for reading and just being here.
XX,
Heather
For me, We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto was an affirmation of my “why”. Maybe food is not life for you, as it is for me, but if you could use some explanation and inspiration about why you should pay more, spend time, and use less when it comes to honoring ingredients in cooking, then you should read this book. It is highly digestible and right-sized for reading it over a weekend.
A sizzling masterpiece! Thank you for taking the time to write such engaging material. You truly are an amazing storyteller!