Good morning. In the past, we’ve covered how to reduce food waste and improve your grocery shopping by using an ingredient based approach rather than a recipe based one.

This week, we’re offering a few other ways to maximize or use up leftover ingredients in the fridge.

LIFESTYLE PROTOCOL 🍳

How to minimize food waste

Do you find yourself throwing out unused ingredients from the back of the fridge? Perhaps half an onion or a wilted bunch of parsley? Here are two options for how to go through your groceries and avoid food waste:

Strategy 1: Shop for ingredients, not recipes

This is our top recommendation for minimizing waste, being efficient with groceries, and reducing food costs.

How do I do this?

Instead of shopping for a bunch of recipes (which will almost certainly end up with unused ingredients), shop for great looking produce and meat, then make meals based on that.

• Once you have ingredients, you can be inspired by recipes or collections that use them up. You’ll have to get creative and adapt some recipes, but you’ll have a great starting point without decision paralysis.

Strategy 2: Cook dishes with overlapping ingredients.

Aka strategically looking at ingredient lists when planning recipes. This works well if you still like picking recipes first.

How do I do this?

When picking recipes, think about 1) variations of dishes within the same cuisine, or 2) dishes with similar ingredient categories (same aromatics, leafy greens, starchy vegetables) and substituting apropriately:

• Can you get arugula for both the salad and the pasta dish instead of buying two separate produce items?

• Can you get away with just broccolini for the veggie side and the stir fry instead of buying two separate vegetables?

Practical Tips

Here are three other best practices that will help you along the way:

1) Learning proper storage so ingredients last longer, giving you a chance to use them up.

• See what we’ve written for what goes in the fridge vs freezer + proper herb/veggie storage.

• Pickling leftover vegetables

2) Adding extra produce into recipes you are making anyways.

• Just using the extra onion, garlic, shallot in the aromatic base of a dish, even if it doesn't call for it. Extra flavor!

• Throwing greens or chopped veg into pasta salads, curries, rice bowls, etc to bulk them up. (See ideas below)

3) Knowing creative ways to use up common leftover produce

• Chimichurri or herb vinaigrette

• Garnishing everything with leftover herbs

• Throwing extra alliums or root vegetables into a freezer stock bag

RECIPE RECOMMENDATIONS ✅

Fridge clean out time

A great way to minimize food waste is by making dishes that have a lot of versatility. These recipes can accept almost any veggies you throw at them:

FOOD TRENDS 🚀

Cuisine agnostic restaurants

If you can never decide what kind of food you’re in the mood for, consider going to a restaurant that can’t really decide either. These "cuisine agnostic restaurants" focus on creative flavors and seasonal ingredients rather than sticking to one specific cuisine, with frequently changing menus.

• Ekka in Mumbai is an example and pioneer in this industry. They aren’t focused on a particular region or cuisine but highlight a variety of different flavors and techniques from all over the globe.

• Orfali Bros in Dubai is a Michelin-starred restaurant that doesn’t follow a certain cuisine; instead, it combines unusual flavors and breaks the rules with its food.

What are the benefits of this style of restaurant?

• Ingredient-based restaurants allow chefs to be more creative and in charge of the menu. They get to be in control and choose the ingredients for the dishes.

• These chefs aren’t tied to making an “authentic” version of anything, which can unlock creativity and innovation.

• Using only local & fresh ingredients can reduce waste and promote sustainability.

This has a takeaway for home cooks: We’ve noticed people can be reluctant to throw together a meal with ingredients they have around because it isn’t following a “real recipe” or a cuisine’s “authentic dish.” Restaurants have moved past that, so you can too. Go experiment!

READER Q&A 🧠

Charring food

Answer: Charring is technically light burning — but it has a purpose.

It adds three desirable things to the dish:

1. Smokey aroma. The carbonized compounds are reminiscent of live fire, even if it was cooked in a pan, and humans tend to like that: why do you think bbq, cured meats, and smoking are present in every culture?

2. Color contrast. We eat with our eyes. Some sort of grill marks or a black tinged edge can be visually appealing: be honest which brussels would you prefer?

3. Subtle bitterness: carbonized compounds are bitter, and a little bit of that is good. They balance sweet or salty flavors and add complexity to a dish. That same pleasant bitterness is why roasted coffee or chocolate is universally loved.

Restaurants do it all the time — the next time you’re cooking at home, don’t be scared to crank the heat and get some charred edges on the food.

Have a culinary question? Reply to send it in for a chance to be featured and get your question answered.

WINNING READER SUBMISSION 🏆

Shrimp sando

This week’s dinner winner is Yannis, who made a shrimp nanban sandwich. What a picture!

Reply with your best home-cooked food photos for a chance to win & be featured!

EXTRA HELPINGS 🍽️

A read: Seattle's New Restaurant Minimum Wage Could Upend the Industry.

In a minute or less: European Butter vs. American for Baking?

What we’re watching: Wagyu Beef

Food science: How is roasting different from baking?

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