How a New Cookbook Turns Food Waste Into Delicious Meals

A new cookbook aims to inspire creativity in the kitchen while tackling food waste. Margaret Li and her sister have written Perfectly Good Food, drawing on their mother’s clever use of leftovers. The book encourages home cooks to experiment with ingredients often discarded, such as mushy fruit or vegetable scraps. Li’s mother often combined leftover takeout sauces to make a unique ‘super sauce’ for cooking. This approach shaped Li’s own habits, as she now uses mushy blueberries in smoothies, cheese rinds in broths, carrot peels in pestos, and herb stalks in various dishes. She also freezes bread ends to later make savoury bread pudding with meats and vegetables.

Chef and author Tamar Adler shares a similar philosophy. She treats leftovers and odd ingredients as valuable as any fresh item. One of her go-to methods is turning leftover rice into fried rice, adding aromatics and other leftover ingredients for extra flavour. Food waste remains a major issue in the U.S., with a quarter of all food products thrown out. The cookbook and these chefs’ methods show how creativity in the kitchen can reduce waste and save money. Even if a leftover dish fails, the authors agree it is fine to discard it and order takeout instead.