FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The Best Ways to Reinvent and Repurpose Leftover Food

by Chidinma Iwu

March 18, 2025

Chef Tamar Adler, author of ‘the everlasting meal cookbook'  said a way to eliminate food waste is to imagine your leftovers as fresh ingredients. This way, there's less food in the compost, less food to buy, and a new, distinct alternative to try. Repurposing is greatly about experimenting, and perhaps standardising your taste buds and thinking of yourself as one culinary expert on a mission to formulate a new staple – what could it be behind that pleasant glistening, without a salty softness, and in the absence of its hard blandness

Wondering how to get started? Here are some creative ways to curb food waste and reinvent leftovers.

Soups

Soups are arguably the least brain racking of foods you can repurpose. You think leftover soup and you think of a base for pasta, mashed potatoes, risottos, casseroles, grains, and even smoothies. For pasta, cook a hearty, long one like fettuccine or bucatini. Meanwhile, let the soup simmer so that the liquid dries up a bit and absorbs the pasta to a solid consistency. As a finishing touch, you can add some seasoning – curry or tumeric, some vegetables, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Mashed potatoes are highly versatile and can complement almost any flavor, so in place of dairy, pour the leftover soup and mash until you get an ideal texture. You can also spread your leftover soup on a pizza dough - typically ones with a protein based variation - simmer in uncooked grains for a creamier texture, and for a casserole, incorporate a starchy element like potato, rice, or pasta so that the starch soaks up some of the liquid along with its subtle flavours. For risottos, preparation would be quicker since most of the seasoning comes from your leftover soup. You can simply use the soup as a substitute/alongside stock.

Vegetables

It's very common to have, say, half an onion, a few broccoli spears or some leftover cabbage after meal preparations, and thanks to their versatility, these vegetables are super easy to repurpose. Think, stir frying cabbage and mushrooms would help retain their nutrients while leaving that crunchy texture, what if you added an oyster sauce topping?

Sweet potatoes taste great when roasted, zucchinis and pumpkins too. What if you put all three together, drizzled with spray oil and seasoned with some rosemary? For dishes cooked on medium heat, adding those leftover vegetables increases their nutritional value, and as a calorie deficit alternative, use vegetables like carrots and cucumbers, or even beetroot, in place of noodles and pasta. There are really no limits – smoothies, pizza, cereals, grains. If my mother had her way she would add them to her tea.

Grains and Bread

There are a lot of creative ways to repurpose leftover grains without the typical stir-fry recipe – add them to frittatas, throw them into a bowl with veggies and bits of protein. Turn the leftover rice into crunchy rice cakes, or mix them into soups. For unseasoned grains, you can warm them up into a bowl and serve with sweeteners as porridge, or use as a pudding substitute by moistening with whole milk, or fold them into omelets and scrambled eggs. For unseasoned grains, try grain salads by mixing with avocados and diced onions and bell peppers. Toss them into baked potatoes and burritos as fillers. Substitute leftover grains for breadcrumbs in meatballs, and mix with shredded cheese in a Mac and cheese. For spent brewing grains, try cookies, or composting, or livestock feeding.

When there's leftover bread — there's french toast, a casserole, meatballs, stuffing, a sandwich, pudding, creamy egg strata, etc. It goes without saying, there's no reason bread leftovers should be caught lying in your bin.