We go through a lot of food at The Food Channel. Our chefs are constantly cooking, experimenting, readying food for photo shoots… and in the process, our editorial team is tasting, commenting, suggesting, and generally working together to get the best product possible.
It means that we sometimes make things over and over again, which, in turn, means our full staff often gets a chance at a taste. We have an aversion to wasting these items, even when they don’t turn out perfectly, and even when we want to tweak the recipe again.
It can also be the case that sometimes we need less of something we bought, we bought the wrong thing, or the ingredient just doesn’t work as well as we thought it would. That’s when ingenuity enters so we keep waste to a minimum and our costs as low as possible for ourselves and our clients. It’s the same thing home cooks do on a regular basis.
The most recent example is when one of our culinary artists picked up some thin bakery-style sugar cookies, thinking they’d work for a project. They weren’t exactly the flavor profile we were going for, and the cookies sat there, forlorn and ready to be easily swept into the bin.
Instead, we threw them in a blender, added a little butter, then patted the resulting crumbs into mini pie tins. Bake for 8 minutes, fill with pudding, mousse, or pie filling, and you have dessert instead of trash.
We bet most home cooks do these things instinctively, making sure they stretch their budget and keep from wasting food. However, it never hurts to be reminded! Let us know any tips you have for saving those ingredients for another use—we always love to learn.
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