In autumn, after returning to the routine, new family budgets for "back to school" arrive. You have to deal with payments for books, school fees, lunch, supplies, extracurricular activities, etc. Expenses multiply while incomes remain the same.

To address these economic challenges, our recommendation is to save on other household aspects. Therefore, in this post today, we'll show you how to make the most of your food and provide you with some ideas for preparing recipes with leftovers.

Don't waste anything! Turn "leftovers" into delicious dishes for you and your family.

 

Don't Waste Food, Plan and Preserve

Controlling food waste is as important as controlling expenses. "Leftovers" can become great ideas for creating new dishes. This will not only save us money but also contribute to reducing the tons of food that end up in organic waste every year.

We waste a lot of food, and we need to be aware of it. While we throw food away, in other parts of the world, people suffer due to its scarcity. Additionally, waste contributes to increasing pollution on our wonderful planet.

 

What are the keys to reducing food waste?

Batch Cooking

Are you familiar with Batch Cooking? It's a new culinary technique to minimize food waste. It involves cooking multiple recipes at once for different days of the week, preparing intermediate preparations to combine and create different but nutritionally complete dishes.

This technique maximizes resources, contributing to savings. Planning is key to successfully implementing batch cooking. Choose the recipes you want to prepare for the week, identify common ingredients, and get started.

How to do it? Cook the base of the dish (for example: pasta, rice, legumes...), also the accompaniments (vegetables, greens, or other foods like eggs). At the last minute, you only need to add the final touch, such as nuts, ham, cheese... and season with olive oil, vinaigrettes, or spices to taste.

 

Batch Cooking

 

If you've ever experienced throwing away food because it's expired or you realize that the packaged goods from the supermarket are too much and even though you plan to use them later, they end up going bad in the fridge.

There are many suggestions and tricks to avoid reaching this extreme, such as planning, freezing, buying fewer packaged goods and more fresh and local products, etc. But today we'll focus on a very important one: reusing those leftovers, whether cooked or raw, in the form of new recipes.

 

Leftover Recipe Ideas

Vegetable Cream Soups

Vegetable cream soups are often made with leftover vegetables that haven't been used in other recipes. There are countless combinations of vegetables that undoubtedly yield great results. Combine them in the most convenient way to fully utilize these food groups. For example, with half a leek, half a zucchini, and a potato, you can prepare a delicious zucchini cream soup.

Below are two ideas that you'll love:

• Asparagus Cream Soup with Ham
• Pumpkin Cream Soup with Iberian Ham

 

Pumpkin Cream Soup

Spring Rolls

Spring rolls are a versatile option that allows you to include a wide variety of ingredients. They become an ideal recipe to use up food leftovers. Unleash your creativity and combine ingredients as you like: tuna, vegetables, ham, minced meat, egg, lettuce... season them with spices and enjoy their flavor.

At Enrique Tomás, we propose a revolutionary recipe that transforms the "original" spring rolls. The distinctive feature of our recipes is always ham, but in this case, it's not just that. Our spring roll proposal completely changes the dish. We replace the wrapper pasta with blanched cauliflower leaves, and inside the roll, we add a filling based on vegetables like carrots, onions, or leeks, accompanied by a handful of mushrooms and, of course, pieces of Iberian ham. In this case, it's our acorn-fed ham variety. Discover the step-by-step preparation.

 

Spring Rolls with Ham

Preparation of Spring Rolls

 

 

Croquettes

Croquettes are also the perfect dish to prepare from food leftovers, whether it's meat or fish. You might have some leftover vegetable stew that you used as a side dish for a meal or some pre-breaded fish. All these "leftovers" are ideal for making your homemade croquettes. Turn one of the typical Spanish tapas into your star dish using what you have at home.

 

Omelettes or Scrambles

Eggs offer numerous possibilities in their preparation: boiled, scrambled, as omelettes, or fried. As a result, the recipes you can prepare with them are also endless. In this case, we offer a couple of ideas that will surely help you use up the foods left in your fridge.

While the classic Spanish omelette is a favorite in Spanish cuisine, there are many variations that include other ingredients and are equally delicious. In this case, we present an omelette made from egg whites, broccoli, and ham shavings.

• Discover how to prepare the broccoli omelette step by step.
  
  

On the other hand, you can prepare a scramble with a base of vegetables like spinach, and add eggs, some mushrooms, and Iberian ham to enhance the flavor. The result: a delicious dish!

• Spinach and Eggs Scramble.

 

Broccoli Omelette with Ham Shavings

 

Spinach and Ham Scramble with Mushrooms and Eggs