How to Use Leftovers to Save Time and Money

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By frugalmomi
User-Submitted Article

Article Rating: (4 Ratings)

How to use leftovers can save you money , not waste food and make cooking easier . Here are some ways to use them .

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

leftovers
freezer bags
internet

Step 1

Lunch: The easiest way to use leftovers is for lunch the next day. If you do not want to do this then just freeze the leftovers until you can find a way to use them . You could also just make a lot of something then freeze it and then one day the following week , drag it out and reheat it . An instant meal that just needs reheating and it is home cooked .
Step 2

Soups : If you have onions and some soup stock or the bouillon cubs you can do almost any kind of soup . Add spices and some milk or noodles and you have a quick cream soup . You can do this with broccoli, spinach , carrots , potatoes . You can add almost any meat too. Chop it up and throw it in as well . so I usually just freeze everything so then I can just pull out random bags and make a random soup day. It is a great side dish for whatever else you are eating that day and good way to get more veggies in .
Step 3

Salads: are a good way to use leftovers too . You can make your own chicken salad with some fresh lettuce and green peppers , tomatoes etc and some leftover grilled or bakes chicken .
Step 4

Pasta sauce: You can sometimes get other vegetables to go well in a pasta sauce too . Just chop it up real fine and then it kind of blends in and no one notices and its better for them too . Things I have added to mine are leftover tomatoes , broccoli , carrots and peppers . As well as any meat I had leftover .
Step 5

Bananas make great banana muffins and cakes . If you do not want to use them right away . Peel them and freeze them in bags or just put them in the refrigerator whole in a bag . They will keep a little longer that way but not forever .
Step 6

Stir fry; If you add them at the last minute stir fry can take additional ingredients as well, but if cooked too long they can get mushy . You could also just take all the meat and vegetables that you have leftover and add the stir fry sauce to it and serve that with some white rice the next day . A rice cooker is a handy way to have something to serve with leftovers and it does the cooking for you . Even better .
Step 7

Fried Rice: Leftover cooled rice and vegetables can become a nice fried rice too . Just add a bouillon cube , salt , pepper , scrambled eggs and you have a nice fried rice almost like a restaurant . You can just freeze ric ein bags ans when ready to use pop it in the microwave a couple minutes to soften it up for fried rice .
Step 8

Internet : If all else fails use web sites like supercook.com to help you find ideas based on what you have . All recipes.com has a nice site for searching for recipes with ingredients you want to use too .