Scrap cooking: how to turn your leftovers into a delectable delight

If holiday meal prep leaves you with plates full of potato peels and cutting boards full of carrot tops, you’re not alone. The US sees a 25% increase in waste during the holiday season – 21% of which comes from our kitchen tables. Just on Thanksgiving, Americans toss a whopping 305m pounds of food. And all these cheese rinds, apple cores, vegetable skins and crusty week-old leftovers that make their way to landfills are harming the planet by emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas. According to one estimate by the UN Environment Program, if food waste was its own country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Much of this so-called food waste is perfectly edible.

“Humans never – until very recently – discarded edible food,” said Tamar Adler, former professional cook and author of the Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z and the cooking advice newsletter The Kitchen Shrink. “Using parts of everything is fundamental to human eating.”

Here, Adler and other chefs share their tips for diverting food scraps from the trash to your plate.

Potato peels

If you’re making mashed potatoes or latkes, chances are you’re going to end up with a heap of potato peels. First things first: slice those skins very thin, then blanch them in boiling water and cool them over ice. From here, you have a couple of different options. Adler suggested roasting the skins in the oven, with salt and olive oil, right away. With toppings of Gruyère and scallions, you can serve these fancy potato chips as a pre-meal snack to guests.

Steven Goff, a sustainability-minded chef at Tastee Diner in Asheville, North Carolina, said he likes to make a similar, albeit more decadent, snack by frying skins and dousing them