I'm just tinkering around the house today, and it's getting cold - I want some soup! I have some smoked ham leftovers that I need to use up, so I was thinking some ham and bean soup would be yummy. I have pinto beans and great northern beans available (precooked/canned - hey, you make due with what you've got!).

Anyone have some quick and dirty soup recipes or ideas on things I can whip up with my leftovers? My kitchen is pretty stocked at the moment, so I'm ready to go!

Will you share your favorite recipe that is good as leftovers? My husband works nights until 3-4 am and so I make his dinner during the day and he reheats it when he gets home.

Thanks :D

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers.  The original meal has never been found.  -Calvin Trillian( b. 1935)

What is your stance on leftovers?  Do you have a favorite way of dealing with them?  Do you use them as a second go round of the original meal or recombine them into something new.  I have a freezer full of leftovers and I'd love some hints.

I was watching Jacques Pepin, when he was creating a batter to dip and fry apple slices. He put all his dry ingredients together and then added a tiny bit of soda water and used a Whisk to blended. he said by whisking it this way, you beat out all the little tiny "globbie" pieces that you would get if you poured all the liquid into the dry ingredients at the same time. I tried it and it worked fine.

However, my point is in regards to the soda water. I happen to have some flavored drinking water in the refrigerator that has a coconut flavor. So I used this in place of all the other liquid ingredients (except for the oil and egg), and it gave it a really nice flavor.

I like to experiment with Waffle or pancake batter. Sometimes I use jam and jelly; yogurt; a single shake of nutmeg, cloves, allspice and a goodly shake of cinnamon.

In addition to the usual blueberries, blackberries, peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips, etc., I've added all kinds of leftovers.

Anything that's liquid and anything that is not sour, including small amounts of gravy (I know, I know but try it first) can be added.

I'm not sure if it was here on LiveJournal or if it was somewhere on the Internet but someone wrote that his or her grandmother was always adding leftovers from "last night's dinner". So before you throw it out, try mixing it into your pancake batter.

I even add different things, in very small amounts of course, to the mixture in my bread machine.

The hint of a coconut flavor in those waffles this morning was wonderful.

Greetings and salutations friends! I come to you in quest of receipey goodness.

The situation is the following: sharing living space with fellow students limits greatly the access to refrigerator and suddenly found myself in possession of 6 pork cutlets (little chops, more or less the size of a human palm) and frankly no space to put them. Freezing them is not an option and they’ll only last so long in he refrigerator. And eating them just like that is getting pretty tiring.

I also have a very limited amount of things to add for it:

-A couple tomatoes (that will go bad in less than a week, for sure)
- Bread (expiration date is due tomorrow)
- Ramen
- Rice
- Pasta
-yellow cheese (that needs to get used asap) and looks like this --> http://www.edukator.pl/pix/users/Image/6plus/rys20898.jpg
- Salt with some herbs
- Grape seed’s oil
-apples
-tangerines

And that’s... pretty much it. No onions, no garlic, no bullion cubes, no eggs, nada mas.

I don’t have an oven, just normal everyday kitchen fire and it’s shared by students, so time and space is limited. To get any other veggies I have to walk a mile and I really don’t have that much time to afford for it.

If you can figure somethign yummy out of this, you are provably related to McGuyver!

Lately my boyfriend and I have been bad at finishing leftovers so this week I was determined to stretch everything I possibly could. I had leftover pie dough (I really like Aida Mollencamp's recipe) so I just used my mini muffin tin and par-baked the dough. Then added leftover deli ham with swiss cheese in some, provolone in the rest, some salt so the dough (which has sugar in it) wasn't overly sweet and a bit of tomato. Into the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes. That was my lunch, with a cucumber salad. Yummy!



I was thinking these would be good with some leftover stew or taco meat, and probably lots of other stuff. So do you all have any nifty leftover tricks that have become regular meals?

I've just been reminded (by eating it) of another of my favourite ultra-quick recipes for using up what's in the fridge. In this case, I first met it when doing medieval cookery, so here behind the cut is the original - well, a translation from fifteenth century French for the longer of the two versions.

( originalCollapse )

To put this into modern English:
Take that green salad in the fridge that's looking too limp to serve undisguised. If it happens to include rocket, spinach, or anything else either bitter or violently green, that's a bonus. Use up any herbs while you're at it, and the leafy bits from the fennel.

Break two eggs into a baby food processor or blender, add a little salt, put the green things on top. Whizz until you have a green liquid with no big bits in.

Heat some butter in a frying pan, and turn this lot into a thick omelette. Finish off the top under a grill.

Optional extra: put some cheese on top before grilling.
Optional extra I've never tried: the second version of the original recipe suggests ginger going in with the greenery.

Here's a picture from a while back of one I made earlier (sorry, today's is gone).

I'm looking for easy to make, budget friendly dinners that also double as amazing leftovers for lunch. Nothing too heavily spiced as my dad doesn't like that, but other than that, I'm totally open. 

I was at a party this weekend and ended up with a bag of assorted savory bagels (onion, garlic, rosemary, tomato basil, whole wheat, cornmeal, salt, etc.)

Any creative ideas for leftover bagels?

EDIT: I went with Savory Bread Pudding. I had 5 bagels. A broke them up into little chunks in a casserole dish. (The salt bagel was very hard) Then I mixed 7 eggs with 4 cups of milk and poured that over the bagel chunks with some poultry seasoning and put it in a pan of water in a 300F oven. I stuck in a thermometer and let it cook to 160F, which took 3 hours.

It was very good.

Just to get a head start on Turkey Day,
What are you favorite recipes for leftover turkey?

Edit to add list:
Cold turkey sandwiches with mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce
Hot turkey sandwiches (turkey, gravy, and bread)
Turkey with gravy and biscuits (or toast)
Turkey stock, soup, noodle soup, cream of turkey soup
Turkey a la king
Turkey Tetrazzini
Turkey pot pie
Turkey tacos, burritos, enchiladas, or chili
Turkey with satay sauce
Turkey salad with pecans, dried cranberries, celery, mayo, and dried dill.
Turkey Hash

So, today I decided to make some vegetable stock, that went well and now I have portions of frozen stock in my freezer. Since I didn't want to waste the vegetables, I put them and some of the stock into my blender and made vegetable soup. The thing is, because it's made of mostly carrots and onions, it's sweet. Being Chinese, I have a dislike of sweet soup, since I grew up on salty soup. Now, any suggestions on what I can do with all this soup? Any interesting ways to put it in dishes or made it into salad dressing or anything like that?

I have four or five HUGE courgettes in the fridge and I'm about to leave for a week away, and I'd like to save them for use in something, it'd be such a waste if they just sat there because they'll be off by the time I come back. :(


Any ideas on what I could do with them?

I had a large catered party this weekend, and ended up with a huge tray of penne with tomato sauce mixed in. It's pretty good (though not spectacular), but it's going to take my husband and me a loooong time to get through it. We'll freeze some, and we've already given some of it away to friends, but I wondered what ideas you guys had to make loads of leftovers a little more exciting.

Here's what I have so far:

toss some cheese on it and bake it
mix some meat into the sauce
both of the above

I'm not a big fan of chicken, but every once in awhile I'll roast one for my family. We then have days worth of leftovers.

I saw this recipe on the local news and thought I'd try it with a few changes.

Leftover roasted chicken chopped. I had about 2 cups
Olive Oil mayo, I'm generous with it because I love it.
3 tlbs bbq sauce
1 clove garlic finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
A couple of dashes of cheyenne pepper
1 tbls dill relish (I tried a taste with sweet, and decided dill worked better)
1 celery stalk finely chopped

I warmed the leftover chicken first. Then I mixed everything together. My boyfriend and son finished the first batch and are now using the rest of the chicken to make some more.

As I'm sure some of you do, I like cooking for real one day of the week, like Sunday, cooking a lot of food, and living on leftovers for a week. Here are some of the best things I've ever done with leftovers.

Leftover Pot Roast Pasta Bolognese kinda thing:

Take the pot roast, and shred it. If it's not tender enough to shred, just braise it in some water until it is.

Couple tablespoons of olive oil in the pan. Render down 3 or 4 slices of chopped bacon. Diced pancetta would work too. Then throw in half a cup of chopped carrots, half a cup of chopped celery, and a cup or so of chopped onion. Sweat that until everything gets a little bit soft. Add minced garlic, a couple pinches of fresh ground nutmeg, and some fresh thyme. Cook that for a little, then deglaze it with vodka or white wine. Then cook it until most of the liquid has either been absorbed or driven off. Now add the shredded meat, a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, and maybe a half-cup or so of the leftover pot roast gravy. If you don't have the gravy, reduce down a can of beef stock or whatnot. After about 20 or 30 minutes, this'll start to thicken. Stir in some chopped parsley, and maybe a 1/4 cup of heavy cream, just enough to cut the acid of the tomatoes.

While you're doing all this, cook a box of fettucine. Add the drained pasta to the sauce, toss it, and sprinkle with grated Parmesan.

Leftover Pork Roast Mexican Stew kinda thing:

Take the pork roast and dice it up. Rehydrate a couple of anchos in some hot chicken broth. Put them in the blender along with some of the broth, half a big yellow onion, some cumin, chili powder, garlic, and Mexican oregano. Put some oil in a pot, fry up the other half of the onion, and then dump in the ancho paste, the pork, and some andouille sausage that you've removed from the casing. Let that cook for a bit, then put in the broth, and a can each of white and yellow hominy. Yes, trust me, whole hominy, it's different from grits.


Mmmmmm.