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If you’re like a lot of cooks, you probably throw out potato peelings, citrus rinds and the cores of your lettuce. While you may think these parts of your food are useless, they actually have plenty of uses, both in and out of the kitchen. While you probably won’t be able to use up every single thing, a lot of the things you throw in the trash have new uses you may have never known about.
1. Make a Compost
Instead of throwing out egg shells, coffee grounds, and plant based scraps, consider starting a compost pile. While there are several types of composts, the easiest is one in which you simply put all of your compostable items in a sealed container and stir it every once in a while until you have a nutrient-rich soil that your plants will love.
You can put many types of food scraps in your compost, but there are some things to avoid. Egg shells, coffee grounds, and vegetable skins are perfect. Meat, bones, pits from olives or stone fruits, and dairy products are not good. Any type of dry brown plant matter like sticks and twigs is good for your compost and actually helps to break it down, but be careful of plants that may have been diseased.
It will take several months before you get anything usable, so be patient with your composting. Stir it often, and make sure that if you keep it outside (you should) that you keep it tightly covered and protected from wildlife. A compost is perhaps the easiest way to use up scraps, especially if you like to garden.
2. Make Stock
Vegetable trimmings and scraps make excellent stock, and it’s an easy way to avoid buying those overly salted cartons or cans at your grocery store.
To do it, simply put them in a pot, fill it with water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 45 minutes or so, and then strain.
Onion and carrot skins, mushrooms, leeks, garlic skins, and herb stems make an excellent stock. Potato peelings, broccoli, or any other strong flavored vegetable should be avoided as it may overpower your final product.
When you have scraps you’d like to use in a stock, stick them in a freezer bag and pop it in the freezer. Continue adding to it until the bag is full. Then, transfer to a pot, fill with water, and make your stock.
3. Make Tea
Lemon rinds and ginger root peelings make an excellent tea. Simply boil in a mug and steep for a few minutes. Strain and you have an excellent, homemade tea that will warm you up on a cold night.
You can keep lemon rinds by letting them dry out completely and then storing them in an airtight container. You can then add them to your tea, or steep them in hot water alone for a comforting hot beverage.
4. Plant Them
Don’t throw out the end of that Romaine lettuce or the end of those green onions. You can grow new plants on your windowsill and you don’t even need any dirt. Simply put them in a jar or open container with a little water and put them in the sun. Within a few days, you’ll see new vegetables sprout from the core.
Once it gets big enough, you can either make a salad or plant the lettuce out in your garden to keep it going.
5. Make Cleaning Products
Orange peels have oils in them that are great for cleaning, but you don’t have to buy expensive cleaning products to get the benefits; you can do it yourself.
Simply save your orange peels in a large mason jar. When it fills up, pour white vinegar overtop of them until they are covered. Put a lid on the jar and let it sit for several weeks, shaking occasionally. After a few weeks, open it up, pour it into a spray bottle and use to clean counter tops, windows, or as a simple all purpose cleaner that won’t harm the environment, and smells really good too.
Lemons make excellent cleaning products, so before you toss out a lemon that you zested, cut it in half and use it to scrub a cutting board or disinfect your counter tops. Lemons have plenty of uses beyond flavoring foods, so there’s almost never a reason to throw one away.
6. Keep Foods From Going Bad
Put an apple slice or piece of bread in your brown sugar to keep it from getting hard. Lemon or lime juice squeezed over an avocado can keep it from turning brown.
7. Clean Your Garbage Disposal or Blender
Instead of throwing that lemon in the trash, put it in your garbage disposal and grind it up to get rid of bad smells. Don’t do this with a lemon that has turned rock hard, however, or you may dent your blades.
To clean and freshen a blender, put a sliced up lemon in it with a pinch of baking soda. Fill it half way with hot water and blend on high speed until you have a frothy, light yellow liquid. Rinse, and you should see a big difference.
8. Make Bread Crumbs
If you have stale bread, extra crusts, or an extra slice or two, you can put them in a food processor and process into crumbs. Store them in a freezer bag in the freezer until you need them. This way, you’ll avoid wasting bread, but you also won’t have to buy those cans of powdered, seasoned breadcrumbs that add little to your cooking anyway.
9. Throw it in a Smoothie
If you have fruit or vegetables that are on their last leg, but you don’t know what to do with it, throw it in a smoothie. You won’t notice a texture difference like you might if you were cooking them, and fruit usually tastes much better the riper it is anyway.
If your fruit has mold, however, throw it out. It’s definitely not worth getting sick so that you can avoid throwing away an old apple or banana.
10. Eat Them
Many foods that we tend to think of as scraps are actually perfectly edible, as well as nutritious. Potato and carrot skins, broccoli stems, and the leafy tops of roots such as carrots and beets are often thrown out, but they don’t need to be. The next time you make mashed potatoes, leave the skin on. Cut those broccoli stems into small pieces and throw them in a stir-fry or soup. The greens on top of root vegetables can be used like any other leafy green, so instead of using spinach in your lasagna, try beet greens. They’re nutritious and perfectly edible.
Conclusion
While there are some scraps that you may not want to use, most plant food scraps are perfectly edible in some way or another. The next time you’re ready to throw something out, ask yourself if it can be reused in some way. If so, you are likely saving yourself some money, as well as helping the environment. While it may not seem like much, every little bit helps.