Leftovers — Please Stop Wasting Good Food.
So, you’ve had your big meal. Hopefully it isn’t the same one I wrote about in November, because it’s not going to be edible now (whoops). But, you’ve all eaten to your full and there’s all this food left over. What do you do with it? Some people throw this out straight away, because they hate money, presumably. But the best thing to do is not let all this perfectly fine food go to waste.
However, often we don’t know what to do with all this leftover food stuck in the fridge. Usually, it just hangs around and takes up a bunch of space until you throw it out a week later, good intentions having come to nothing. Well, not that that’s ever happened to me. Ahem. If this tragic fate has ever befallen you, don’t worry. You aren’t personally responsible for the fall of mankind. Well, you might be, but not because of this. Probably. Anyway, what might help is a few ideas for what to do with all this leftover food. It doesn’t have to be depressing fare either, sometimes I look forward to these meals almost as much as the actual roasts. Some of these ideas are obvious and perhaps not to your taste, but I’m not throwing out a bunch of recipes. Just showing that there’s so much to be done with this food and you needn’t despair.
First things first, stock. Whether you can make stock depends on what you had for your roast, if it has bones, go ahead. Every single time I make a chicken dinner, I make a stock that evening. If you have room in the fridge, you can refrigerate everything whole and do it the next day, but I never do unless I really can’t be bothered. In either case, strip the chicken carcass of all the meat. If you have two small dogs at your feet, you might find that you accidentally drop some of the gristle. Otherwise, put everything that you don’t want to eat in a large saucepan. Along with this, sling some veg in. Generally, you want something like onions, celery, carrots, and garlic for a basic stock. But you can put other things in as well, or substitute when you need to. You don’t need to be too fussy with prep, but I’m not going to stop you. I usually chuck in a couple of bay leaves and some whole black peppercorns. Fill the pan with water, and let it simmer partially covered for a few hours. Usually, that takes me to bedtime. Strain the stock and let cool before refrigerating. If, like me, you don’t want to wait, then put in a few ice cubes to speed up the cooling process. To me, homemade stock is one of the best things about any roast dinner. It’s far, far better than the shop bought stuff, so easy to do, and cheaper as well. I also regularly make it with chicken wings, which is almost as easy.
Also depending on what meat you used, you might have enough for another meal. If, like the pictured roast dinner above, you kind of devoured it all, you can still do something with it. The obvious option it to use the chicken in sandwiches and the like, but one thing I tend to do is make soup. Homemade soup is laughably better than the tinned stuff, to the point that I didn’t like soup and never ate it, until I started making it for my family. Personally, I’m still not a huge fan of chicken soup, but if you are, then it’s the perfect way to use leftovers. Check what vegetables you have leftover, chances are that you’ll be able to chuck them in as well. I prefer using root vegetables for a wintery chicken soup. If you just have the chicken, that’s great too. When I make chicken soup, I usually sauté some onions or leeks, then add garlic, celery, carrots and whatever other random vegetables I have on hand. Most of the time, this is swede, parsnip, and mushrooms. Oh, don’t forget a potato to thicken it up if need be. Cook this in enough chicken stock or water to cover, then blend it all together. Taste, then add your seasonings. You know, salt, pepper, a bit of nutmeg, chopped sage, mustard, chopped bacon (with the fat), and the chicken. Now your vaguely chicken-y and sweet root veg soup should taste pretty good. You probably have your own recipe which you prefer, but you can make a decent soup out of almost anything.
So far, we have stock and soup. Now, this article could be nigh endless, but I’ll just mention one more thing I commonly make with leftovers. Maybe there will be another one or two articles in the future with some other, maybe more interesting, suggestions, but here I’m sticking to the basics. Also three is the magic number. To stick with the current theme of homely, British style foods and to keep everything beginning with ‘S’, I’m going to talk about Stew. Stew sometimes has a bad reputation, but I honestly don’t know why. Maybe it’s considered boring or something? But, incorrect opinions aside, stew is fantastic. It’s fantastic because it is just so versatile. If you have enough meat, you can make a stew from the leftovers, then use the leftover stew to make another leftover. Pretty crazy, huh?
A basic stew isn’t much different from a basic soup. Now, the stew recipes can change wildly depending on what meat you use, so I’m going to stick with the chicken. However, this is often something I’ll do with beef as well. Leftover pork and lamb get different treatment. So, to start, look at your aromatics again. You know, the same stuff that went in the stock and the soup and that will go in so many European dishes that involve a sauce. Onions, celery and carrots. Prep them and bang them in. If you have leeks, fantastic. Also garlic always rocks. If you want a mushroom-y stew (I wholeheartedly recommend), then break them up into manageable chunks and add them to the pot. While all this loveliness is sautéing away, season with salt and pepper and throw in some flour. After ten minutes or so, deglaze the pan with something wet. Cider, stock, or water are all decent options here. Scrape all the gunk up from the bottom of the pan, this stuff is flavour, then add in your leftover chicken and veg if you’re feeling adventurous. Finally, top in enough liquid to cover and some flavour enhancers, such as herbs, mustard, or Worcestershire sauce. I recommend sage again, but I just like sage.
Okay, you now have the basic stew (not talking about you, Stew). What do you do with your stew? Well, you can do a lot of things. You can top it with thinly sliced potatoes and put it in the oven, making a hotpot. You can add some pearl barley or potatoes to bulk it up a bit, then serve it with bread. You can make delicious suet dumplings. But my favourite thing to die is make a pie.
Honestly, the ‘pie’ option was going to be my third leftover suggestion, but it didn’t begin with ‘S’. I almost always make pie with leftover chicken. You could just top it with puff pastry and call it a day, but that is evil and Not A Pie. My family is a fan of the complete pie, with “walls, floor, and ceiling” as my father would say. You do need to fiddle around a bit more with your ‘stew’ to turn it into a decent pie filling, but it’s worth it. First of all, I usually separate the solids from the liquids in the stew; you don’t have to be too fussy about it, the solids should still have a decent amount of moisture in them. Now I have pie filling and gravy, yippee. While your filling cools, make your pie dough. I personally prefer shortcrust, but I don’t care what you do. I’m not eating it. I do recommend blind baking the pie, which means that you partially cook the “walls and floor” before adding the still-damp filling. This makes sure it cooks completely and keeps a “soggy bottom”, which as we all know, is a crime punishable by death in Britain. Then, feel free to add your filling, put the “ceiling”, or lid, on your pie and decorate as you desire. Use an egg or milk wash to help the crust brown and make sure to stick a hole in to prevent cracking. Serve with chips (chunky fries), mushy peas, and gravy. Or mash or whatever else. You know what, just eat it out the pie tin with your bare hands for all I care.
So, that’s three things that you can do with the leftovers of a Sunday Lunch. I focused a bit on chicken again, but I’m okay with that. I’ll admit, there was a bit of a delay between articles. Simply put, life got in the way a bit. If you did use those leftovers from November, that’s on you though.
