How to keep food waste out of landfills
Chefs know that nothing in the pantry needs to go to waste if you use a little imagination.
“As chefs, we’re used to taking things that are no longer the best and turning them into a jam or a sauce or dehydrating them or blending them,” said Phillip Frankland Lee, chefowner of the Encino, Calif., restaurants Scratch/ Bar and Kitchen, Sushi/Bar, and Woodley Proper. “The idea of not letting food go to waste, I think, is a common practice in a lot of our kitchens.”
Lee recently joined L.A. chef and restaurateur Roy Choi and blogger Chelsea Lord of Chelsea’s Messy Apron in partnering with Kroger, the parent company of Ralphs supermarket chain, for a sustainable tasting event at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim in front of about 600 people.
The event, a spotlight on Kroger’s “Zero Hunger | Zero Waste” initiative that aims to end hunger in its communities and eliminate food waste throughout the company by 2025, was aimed at teaching people how to create masterful dishes with ingredients that otherwise would have ended up in the trash bin.
In fact, 40 percent of all food produced in the United States goes to waste.
Some of that food is thrown out unnecessarily.
“Things aren’t rotten until they’re rotten,” said Choi, co-owner,and chef of Kogi BBQ, Chego!, A-Frame, Commissary, POT and LocoL. “And even if they’re rotten, you can control how rotten they get.”
Here’s are a few suggestions to get your started:
Use every part of an ingredient: Take carrots, for example. There’s no need to peel them, so don’t. But if you do, add the peels to a salad. Have the carrots gone all soft and rubbery? Then pickle, roast or dehydrate them into chips or toss them into a soup or stew. As for carrot tops, they can be grilled, blanched and pureed, or chopped into pesto.
Not sure? Look online for recipes that use all parts of an ingredient.
Use your imagination: Lee doesn’t waste meat, finding ways to repurpose or reuse it in new ways. “We’re able to utilize only the best cuts,” Lee said of the sushi bar next to one of his other restaurants. “Anything that maybe is two days past being fresh for sushi will go on the grill next door. Once it can no longer go on the grill, it goes into a soup.
“Once it can’t go in soup, then,” he said, with a chuckle. “Well, we try not to let it get to that point.”
For information on meat storage times, go online.
Use what you already have: When following a recipe, Lord suggests using the ingredients you already have on hand so nothing goes to waste. Because yes, it’s OK to substitute. “A lot of people don’t know you can switch out simple ingredients,” Lord said. “It will work just fine.”