Do you scavenger cook?

A great way to use up bits and pieces of leftovers

My cooking class students often ask what I love to cook at home. Truth is, my favorite way to cook is to pull things out of the fridge and create, so I don’t have a name for most of my dishes.

Today, I’d like to share an example of how my scavenger cooking works.

One morning breakfast began with side scraps I didn’t use when making teriyaki salmon fillets during a class...

I built from there, looking for great flavor, color, texture, and food group combos.

The end result: delicious!

The Process

I first decided to cook the salmon and crisp up the skin by pan frying in a bit of butter and oil.

I pulled out some purple cabbage and sliced it thinly, julienned a few sweet yellow peppers and sliced up some ginger root.

I sautéed the cabbage, peppers and ginger.

Then I remembered a flavored balsamic vinegar dressing leftover from yesterday, and added apple cider vinegar and date syrup before drizzling on the cabbage.

I half poached two eggs, drained the water, flipped the eggs over, added a drizzle of oil and finished them with a quick fry.

I sliced up a fresh avocado and some fresh rosemary.

Plated.

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Another example: leftover ground pork

I open the refrigerator and pull out the ingredients I see:

• Ground pork

• Egg whites with some egg yolk mixed in, which means they can’t really be whipped.

• Cooked lentils.

• Feta cheese.

I stand perfectly still. Breathe. Think about what each of these ingredients COULD do in a dish.

Pork can become sausage patties. Egg whites the binder.

What do I need: flavor, texture, and seasonings. Feta made me think Mediterranean.

So I pulled out kalamata olives and grabbed cumin and shawarma seasoning from the pantry.

I can’t use garlic and onion in my main home kitchen when my husband, who has severe allergies, is home. I added a little powdered garlic and toasted onion powder.

I had no dill in the house so added some dry basil with the salt and pepper. I then cut open a hibiscus tea bag to give some extra aromatics.

As I mixed in the egg whites, more slipped in than I wanted, so I needed to add a bit of “filler.”

I could use the leftover sushi rice staring at me from the fridge, but decided on oat bran from the pantry instead to give more fiber and less bulk.

I formed patties and fried them in a little oil.

The patties needed a gravy – so I made a roux of butter and flour. The gravy needed flavor and color but I didn’t have time for the roux to cook into a brown sauce so I turned to my go to color enhancers.

I had no stock on hand but noticed a jar of Better Than Bouillon that I mixed with some half and half. When the mixture got a little too thin, I added a cornstarch mixed in cold water to thicken it.

I still wanted more color so I found an upside down “tail end of a jar of oyster sauce.” I didn’t want it to overpower the olive and feta flavors so I didn’t add too much, but added a few drops tamari and ground black pepper from the cupboard.

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The Lesson

What I’ve learned over the years is that leftovers doesn’t mean we need to eat the same thing day after day. Instead, we can combine bits and pieces of ingredients from one meal or another, along with some staples that are always on hand.

And we don’t have to be afraid of fusing flavor profiles!

A little oyster sauce or hibiscus or oat bran can go a long way to add a depth of flavor or color to any dish.

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How do you use your leftovers?

Do you create scavenger meals or do you prefer to follow recipes?

I’d love to hear from you…