Have you ever cooked up too much food, only to find your fridge overflowing with enough Tupperware to feed a small nation and not enough time to eat them in? Here are some easy ways to repurpose meals to eat them over the course of a week!
Swap your base
If what you’ve cooked is something liquidy (think sauce, soup, or curry), try switching out what you’re eating it on. If you’ve made a curry, try adding a bit of cheese to it and having it over pasta for a delicious spicy noodle dish — this sort of curry noodle is really popular in Japan, usually in the form of curry udon. Or, if you’ve made a pasta sauce, why not pour it over rice and bake it in the oven for a crispy, crunchy baked rice dish? A bit of cheese would go a long way here! And, of course, everything tastes amazing over a round of buttery toast.
Spice it up
Spaghetti bolognese can transform really comfortably into a chili con carne with the right spices and seasonings, with some delicious baked tortilla taco shells. A bit of Chinese five spice added to bolognese and then served over rice tastes absolutely amazing, too! Alternatively, adding spices to any sort of dish can breathe new life into it. A few chopped birdseye chili in some fresh pesto and then drizzled on toast can turn into your new favourite spread.
Switch your greens
Keeping a rotating set of greens to add to your leftovers can save you from going insane over the course of a week of the same food. Steamed cabages and leeks can bolster a meal without adding too much offending flavour, same with a bag of spinach wilted into whatever sauce you’re making. Equally, pasta served over a crunchy salad can be a great change of texture as well as help you use up your going-off veg.
Does it fry?
Seriously. Just try frying it. I mean this. Pasta in tomato sauce can become sticky and sweet if you toss it in a frying pan for a few moments, becoming more like a mi goreng than a pasta dish. Mashed potatoes lend really well to being fried, becoming crispy and crunchy and perfect with whatever sauce you want to top it with. Equally, fried rice is a tried and true staple of leftovers, adapting to whatever you put in it — leftover bits of bacon, chicken, or any vegetable you can find.
Photo by Nicole De Khors from Burst.
