One of the easiest ways to use up leftovers is to plan them in advance. Using a bit of joined up thinking to link your menu for the week. The simplest way to illustrate this is with a roast chicken. Eat fresh out of the oven on day one, use the remaining meat in a pie on day two and boil up the carcase up for soup on day three. You can even go a step farther and crack and roast the bones before boiling them up to make broth or stock the following day.
Another technique is batch cooking. This also helps to make the most of special offers. Instead of making a bolognaise sauce for one meal, increase the quantities and give yourself the option of freezing what is left over or using it as a base for another meal the next day. You might simply create two dishes that are exactly the same, eat one and freeze the other. In this case avoid anything with pasta as this comes out soft and mushy after it has been frozen. Thickened gravies also tend to separate after defrosting so avoid dishes that use them. If you can plan ahead you will save yourself time and money by taking items out of the freezer the day before and defrosting them in the fridge. Just make sure that they are not going to leak as they start to melt.
This technique also enables you to eat fresh (as opposed to frozen) meals each day while only shopping once a week. If a piece of meat has a three day shelf life you can cook it on day three and it will still be safe to eat on day six. Remember to check the use by dates when you are doing your shop.
Some meat is not suitable for repeated re-heating. As M.E.Rattray says in her original book ‘Cold meat and how to disguise it,’ ‘never allow previously cooked meat to reach the heat of boiling water (100C), for this will immediately render it, hard, unpalatable and indigestible.’ This is sound advice for joints of beef and pork and lamb. Just remember that if you are reheating food it must reach a minimum of 75C to be sure that is safe to eat.
A very useful book with menu plans and batch cooking techniques is 'The Family Meal planner.'
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