Tips on How to Use Leftovers Effectively

Using leftovers effectively can be very intimidating for some people. Most people just reheat leftovers and serve them the same way they did two nights ago. No wonder the family cringes at the thought of eating yesterday’s food!

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are some foods that are great in their original form two days later but it’s definitely not the majority.

Since that’s the case, let’s talk about how we can improve our leftover game and make meals our family will love.

Believe it or not, this is a lunch I threw together today and it’s mostly made up of leftovers.

If you think you’d like your leftovers to look like this keep reading. I share my top tips for using up leftovers effectively. This means being creative in making new dishes that you actually enjoy eating without having to be a chef.

Before we continue, let me clarify what I mean by leftovers. When I refer to leftovers I am talking about foods that were already once prepared as part of a meal or dish. These can be individual ingredients that were cooked or flavoured in some way, like roasted potatoes, or a whole dish, like a caesar salad.

You don’t have to be a creative cook to make a fantastic second meal out of leftover food. You just need a few tools to help you be confident in how to combine the leftovers you have.

Benefits of Using Up Leftovers

There are many benefits to reusing leftovers instead of just discarding them.

Firstly, you save money. Every little bit of food you throw out is money going in the garbage. I’m sure none of us have money to waste so we definitely want to get value for every dollar we spend.

Secondly, ‘cooking’ with leftovers is faster than making a whole dinner from scratch. Since the ingredients you are using will already be cooked all you’ll have to do is reheat it.

Lastly, transforming leftovers is often much easier than cooking a whole dinner from scratch. If you use my tips below using leftovers effectively will be a piece of cake.

Read on and you too can be on your way to becoming a leftovers master.

5 Tips for Using Leftovers Effectively

1. Think of the leftovers as an ingredient instead of a previous dish.

If you’re thinking about caesar salad as a salad then you may have a hard time thinking of anything else that you can do with it. It’s okay to use it again as a salad but I think our goal here is to transform rather than re-serve. If you think of Caesar salad as just one ingredient in a larger dish you might come up with a Caesar salad wrap instead.

2. Collect leftovers over a couple of meals.

If you have leftovers from yesterday’s meal, use today’s meal to add to that. For example, if you have leftover rice from yesterday, cook up some extra protein from tonight’s meal. This way you are slowly creating a leftovers meal before you actually make it.

3. Keep a list of your favourite leftovers recipes/concepts.

What are your favourite ways to transform leftovers? It’s really important to have some go-to concepts so that you’re not racking your brain or searching for a very specific recipe at the last minute.

Here are some of my favourite concepts for transforming leftovers:

Bowl or salad
Hot sandwich
Omelette or frittata (see our ‘Everything-In’ Frittata recipe)
Pasta sauce (read the substitutions section in our Sausage Tomato Pasta with Vegetables recipe)

4. Combine leftovers with fresh ingredients.

Fresh here means non-leftover foods. Add a slice of cheese, fresh produce or a freshly cooked protein or carb. This will make the meal feel new and different even if it’s not a huge change. What you want is to add different textures and flavours in order to transform.

5. Add a dressing, sauce, or both!

So you planned ahead, you accumulated enough lefovers in your fridge to be forced to eat them, and you have a list of recipes. I’m sure you’re thinking “Now what? I’m still stuck with a fridge full of leftovers”.

Well, the last and most important trick in transforming those leftovers is to use a dressing, sauce, or both! This is the ultimate way to infuse a new and different flavour to turn your leftovers into a brand new dish.

Here are some ideas for sauces that you can keep in your back pocket:

Buffalo Sauce: Great for chicken, tofu, chickpeas and cauliflower.
BBQ Sauce: Perfect for chicken, pork or tofu, or as a spread on a sandwich.
Mushroom Sauce: Perfect for meatballs, chicken or pork.
Tzatziki Sauce: The perfect dip for pork, beef or chicken, an excellent spread in pita or wrap or just the right sauce to bring your bowl to the next level.
Sriracha mayo: spicy and creamy this sauce or dip can really elevate a burrito or wrap

The following are dressings and dips I regularly use to improve my leftovers:

Ranch Dressing and Dip: Perfect for salads, bowls and wraps.
Guacamole: Excellent topping for a bowl or as a spread in a burrito.
Lemon Dressing and Marinade: Great flavour changer for rice, couscous or quinoa, or a dressing for your salad or bowl.

See my example below of how I used this secret trick to make a meal that knocked Kyle’s socks off!

An Example of How I Used Leftovers Effectively Today

I will start off by saying that I didn’t plan all these leftovers in advance but I didn’t try hard to prevent them from accumulating. Today I opened my fridge and found the following leftovers:

a few roasted potatoes
turmeric rice
herbed chicken bites

This one was easy for me. Per above tip 3. Keep a list of your favourite leftovers recipes/concepts, as soon as there is rice I’m either turning it into a burrito or a bowl. Today I opted for a bowl because I thought the potatoes wouldn’t be great in a wrap.

Step 1: Warm up the rice

I simply reheated the rice in the microwave with a teaspoon of butter. The butter just brings some moisture back into the grains. This was the base for my bowl.

Step 2: Reheat the potatoes

In my opinion, the only way to reheat previously roasted potatoes is on a pan. I fried them on high heat until crispy again and added some salt. Once heated through, I added them to the rice.

Step 3: Transform the Chicken

In the same pan that I used to heat the potatoes, I melted some butter, added a little flour and a lot of Frank’s Red-Hot sauce. Then I added the chicken bites, coated them in the sauce and cooked until them until they were heated through. This is tip 5. Add a dressing or sauce, or both! from above. This immediately created a different type of chicken.

Step 4: Add fresh ingredients

Now we are on to step 4. Combine leftovers with fresh ingredients. I had some spinach in the fridge so I added it as my fresh ingredient. It might not seem like much but trust me it goes a long way. I also added some Salad Topper (a combination of roasted pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and dried cranberries), and hemp seeds. The seeds add a new texture and some different flavours.

Step 5: Complete the transformation and bring everything together

We are back to tip 5. Add a dressing or sauce, or both!. This time I added a dressing. I had some of our Lemon Dressing and Marinade on hand so I poured it over everything in the bowl except the already saucy chicken. This is where the magic happened. All of a sudden what could have seemed like very separate ingredients were brought together by the dressing to make a cohesive bowl.

That’s it! A few simple steps and we created something phenomenal out of some old rice, potatoes and chicken.

Your Turn!

No one likes waste so apply these tips to your leftovers and see how much time and money you can save. Remember that every time you throw out leftovers you’re throwing away your hard-earned money.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with flavours. If you’re using flavours you already like chances are that they will work. Just remember that the KISS rule applies. Keep It Simple Silly!

Let us know if this was helpful and be sure to share your transformations with us. I always love to have new ideas that I can use myself.