What’s the secret to a zero-waste kitchen?
James, Bristol
Between spud peelings, bread on the turn and last night’s rice congealed into the shape of a brick, we bin £20bn worth of food in the UK annually, according to Wrap, the waste-reduction body. We all need to make changes, James, and this starts with how you’re shopping. Obvious, yes, but taking stock, working out how many mouths need feeding and, as the Guardian’s Tom Hunt puts it, “really eating for pleasure” (by which he means valuing your food) will stand you in good stead.
“The key is changing the way you buy,” says Skye Gyngell, chef and founder of London’s Spring, who runs a “scratch menu” using waste. She shops little and often, supported by a “really strong pantry” of pulses, olive oil, vinegars and mustards. “I make a big soup or slow-cooked dish on Sunday that will see us through a couple of meals,” she says, bolstering it with salad, cheese or good-quality bread picked up on her way home. Our Anna Jones agrees: “Deciding what kind of cook you are is also useful. Some people need to meal plan, do a weekly shop and batch cook – which obviously depends on where you live geographically – but I want to cook something I’m craving that night, so it suits me to shop in small increments, and I find I waste less this way, too.”
For veg not destined for the compost, Douglas McMaster, the chef behind zero-waste restaurant Silo, formerly of Brighton and now relocated to London’s Hackney Wick, turns them into pickles, ferments and dark treacle syrup, and carrot tops into pesto: “You can also make an amazing salad with fried potato skins dressed with slow-cooked red onions and mustard, then tumbled through turnip, radish or even beetroot tops,” he says.
Complete consumption, AKA root-to-fruit eating, is all well and good, but we shouldn’t forget the basics, Jones says: “Milk, bread and bagged salad leaves are top culprits for food waste, so buy them in small enough quantities that you use them up and, if there are leftovers, you have a couple of recipes up your sleeve.” Stale breadcrumbs are good for adding texture to mac and cheese, take on flavour well (for salads or a croustade), and can be used straight from the freezer. Jones uses salad leaves that have seen better days in soups, stews or pasta dishes; leftover nuts are added to her “little jar of random nuts” for pesto, frangipane or toasting, chopping and tossing over soups. Essentially, be intuitive: “Trust yourself,” she says, “if you haven’t got self-raising flour, for example, don’t go out and buy some, just use plain flour and baking powder.”
We don’t often think of wasted fish, says Hunt, who encourages buying the whole animal: “People can be squeamish when it comes to heads, but the cheeks are the best tasting, most succulent piece of meat on the fish.” Chef Josh Niland champions fin-to-gill eating in The Whole Fish Cookbook: “Buying and cooking only fish fillets is not only creatively limiting but also neglects the majority of the fish – a shame, both from an ethical and sustainable point of view.” (A cod fillet, for example, makes up just half the fish’s weight.) While puffed fish skin and eye chips might not be on the cards for my tea tonight, collars, heads and offal are worth a try. “Attempting fish offal for the first time at home can feel intimidating,” says Niland, who suggests starting with fish liver on toast, for which the best approach is to treat it as you would chicken liver: “Pink and warmed through with a tan crust on the outside.”
We all know we should be eating less but better-quality meat, and this goes hand-in-hand with zero-waste cooking. Hunt opts for cheaper cuts or parts of the animal that are often wasted (or fed to other animals), such as offal or chicken wings: “Support a good butcher by bringing value to the cuts of meat they otherwise might have to throw away due to lack of demand.” Chickens are the obvious choice for buying whole, and Hunt picks up two carcasses every Saturday, pop Offal can be a harder sell, but Hunt thinks he can tempt you, James: “I didn’t like kidneys until I tried them devilled. Make sure you remove the core, then fry them quickly in some butter with cayenne pepper, Worcestershire sauce, redcurrant jelly and cream, and they’re delicious.” Just add a bit of parsley at the end to freshen things up.
• Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
