Leftovers can be challenging. Occasionally you’ll have a meal so good that you actually look forward to scarfing it down cold the next day, but that’s not always the case. I usually have bits and bobs of leftovers—things I didn’t care for in the first place, or stray ingredients I can’t seem to get rid of. My curse however, is that I hate (hate!) tossing edible food. So over the years, I’ve gotten better at reworking leftovers, and you can too. Here are my favorite ways to repurpose leftovers into incredible new meals.
Recipes for reviving leftover meals
I run into two types of leftovers: leftover meals and leftover single ingredients. Let’s start with leftover meals. This section is how I like to transform prior dinners or lunches—like sausage and peppers or chicken casseroles— to give them a new life.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Leftovers as pizza toppings
Do I have a borderline problem with eating personal pizzas? Who’s to say. But that continual experience has given me the confidence to say leftovers make for great pizza toppings. If pizzerias can put chopped chicken cutlets and penne on their pizza, so can you. Here’s how I like to pizza my leftovers. All you need is a ball of thawed pizza dough from the grocery store and a bit of cheese to act as your “glue.”
Egg roll ‘em
What do the stray container of leftover brisket, the green curry chicken from three days ago, and the sausage and peppers from Sunday have in common? They’d all be great with a crispy egg roll shell wrapped around them. Egg rolling your leftovers is extremely simple with a pack of premade wrappers that you can buy from the refrigerated aisle of your grocery store. Once you’ve secured your delicious leftovers in the center, deep fry or air fry them for a wonderful lunch or dinner.
Stack leftovers into a lasagna
It helps to think of leftover food as a component that needs a new vehicle to carry it, like pizza dough or an egg roll wrapper. Pasta noodles are a versatile main ingredient too. While you could toss your leftovers with spaghetti, turning it all into a stacked lasagna is more impressive, and personally I think it’s more appetizing. While I’m using Thanksgiving leftovers here, you certainly aren’t limited to that. Boil the pasta noodles and use them to sandwich each layer of leftovers, like thinly sliced meatloaf, creamed spinach, or vegan steamed dumplings. (It’s okay to layer carbs with carbs.)
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Risotto your leftovers
I showed you how to fake risotto with leftover rice, but you can also throw your leftovers into risotto. Risotto is another one of those helpful carbs that act as a vehicle for your once-fresh food. Though this recipe is geared toward Thanksgiving leftovers, the concept stands for any leftover protein and veg. Make your risotto as usual and just after you ladle in the last bit of stock, drop in your chopped leftovers to warm up in the pot.
Build a satisfying sandwich
Sandwiches are like old episodes of your favorite show—it’s your back-up when you don’t know what to watch (or eat, in this case). A leftovers sandwich is the solution when you can’t figure out what to do with that massive casserole from your cousin’s brunch party. Since leftovers can be irregularly shaped (as opposed to sliced deli meats), I suggest grabbing large slices of bread and potentially leaving them untoasted. Then the soft texture can hug and hold onto the fillings better. Here are some ways you can tweak a sandwich to make it even more delightful.
Recipes for common leftover ingredients
This section is devoted to my most common leftover ingredients. These are things that maybe haven’t made it into a full meal yet—like raw celery or cooked leftover rice—but they’re living their last moments in my fridge. I’ll lean on these recipes to keep them from becoming trash.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
The many iterations of leftover rice
There was a year or two that I would order Chinese food take-out frequently, and end up with tubs of extra rice stacked up in my freezer. A day of reckoning would come once a month when I would have to figure something out, or I’d have no freezer space. So I have more than one way to use up leftover rice. This crispy rice cake, this fake risotto, and this comforting rice salad are all good to have in mind.
The problem with celery
Celery is one of those ingredients that will haunt your crisper drawer for 100 years. I’m not even exaggerating, it actually grows more stalks while it’s in there. Its only charm is how crunchy it is, so I wouldn’t recommend egg rolling it or putting it on pizza. My solution for unused stalks is to make this salad which relies on thin, diagonal slices to maintain crunch but reduce “stringiness.” The vinaigrette adds much needed flavor, the Thai chili wakes up your palate, and the hard boiled eggs create a more satiating dish.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Extra hard boiled eggs
Boiled eggs make a great on-the-run snack, so I’ll often cook up a bunch at the beginning of the week and keep them in the fridge. But some weeks will wrap up and I’ll have a few that I never got to. Unless I feel like crushing three or four cold eggs, so instead I’ll make a yam kai dao salad. Shallow frying the hard-cooked eggs give them an appealing crispy-chewy exterior and the lime and fish sauce dressing creates a flavor profile you’ll look forward to eating again with next week’s eggs.
Cold plain pasta
I find it infuriating that the “proper” serving of dry pasta is two ounces. I would like to eat a pound of it but alas, I have been shamed by society, so I’ll begrudgingly put the supposed extra in a container for the next day. With this clever trick, I now look forward to leftover pasta. This works for both plain boiled pasta or pasta that has a light coating of sauce. Add butter to a frying pan and tip the cold carbs into the melted butter. Stir and loosen the pasta as it warms up and then let it fry so it gets crispy and brown on the bottom. Serve it immediately to enjoy the new crunchy-soft texture of your stir-fry-revived pasta.
That half-can of coconut milk
Kind of like the cup of puréed pumpkin I didn’t need for a recipe, I’ll occasionally end up with an unused portion of coconut milk in my fridge. I don’t particularly like it in my coffee, but that flavorful, fatty gift from nature cannot be wasted. I decided the best way to use it up would be to capitalize on its inherent richness and make it into a luxurious coconut pudding for one. This simple recipe uses a cherry compote to top it off but you could substitute another fruit, jam, or go without and let the silky coconut speak for itself.
