Zero Waste Cooking: 17 Ways to Reduce Food Waste in the Kitchen

Food waste is a big problem: up to 40 percent of the food in the US is uneaten and the average household of four throws away an estimated $1,350 to $2,275 per year in wasted food. One way to approach the problem of individual food waste is to strive for zero waste cooking in the kitchen

The first steps for reducing your food waste are making a plan, getting organized and shopping smart. The next step — zero waste cooking — means approaching food completely differently, as if the trash can doesn’t exist. Think smart. Get creative. Use parts of ingredients in ways you haven’t before. Instead of throwing them out, saute leaves, steep leftover herbs in hot water for tea, dehydrate peels to create spice mixes. With a little extra thought, everything can be used. Here are just some of the hundreds of ways you can use every part of your food.

Cook Every Part 

Zero waste cooking starts with the obvious: eat every part of the ingredient you’re cooking with. This is nose-to-tail, root-to-stem cooking. Cookbooks like the James Beard Foundation’s “Waste Not” and Abra Berens’s “Ruffage” have a lot of inspiring ideas on how to do it. Here are some others to get you started.

Use stems

The leaves of vegetables like Swiss chard and kale are often removed from the fibrous stem (sometimes called the rib) before being chopped, to make cooking faster. But the stems are also edible. Chop them up and saute, add to soups or puree into smoothies. Similarly, fennel stalks and broccoli stems (also called stalks) can be roasted, grilled and sauteed. The firmer texture of broccoli stems is great for making coleslaw, an easy toss-in-whatever-you’ve-got recipe.