Maximize Your Food's Value

General Tips

You can freeze things separate in portions and put them together after they are frozen and they won't stick.
When processing food (chopping, peeling, etc.), do it all at once and store the processed food all together in small batches. You are already doing it, just do more.
Get stacking containers and organize your fridge and freezer so you can't lose stuff. There is no point in doing all this prep if the food goes to waste.
Worst case scenario, your food can be compost, which can feed our ecosystem again.
Keep a bag in your freezer and put vegetable scraps in it (heads, ends, peels of soup materials). When it's full, make stock in a slow cooker and add the bag in.
You can almost always use every part of a piece of food with few exceptions. Pickling things can render otherwise inedible food into yummy food.

Meal prep!

Most of cooking is getting started and getting finished, with just a little active time in the middle. If you consider the basic steps, many of of them take essentially the same amount of time regardless of quantity of food cooked, while others certainly don't go up in time linearly with the amount of food being prepared.

Gathering all the materials: barely goes up in time with lots of food
Prepping the ingredients, with context switching in between each thing: barely goes up
Cooking/baking the elements: considering lots of downtime, barely goes up
Plating/storing them: goes up linearly
Cleaning up: barely goes up

Almost no step really has time spent go up linearly, and even still, the step of storage is an easily systematized task. Take advantage of this! If you are making one of something, make two and freeze/fridge the other part. Make as much food as possible all at once and store it using your fridge and freezer.

Using your off cuts

Maximize the usage of your food. Waste not, want not. The worst case is you have compost, but we can avoid that most of the time.

Fruits

Candied citrus peels
Fruit scrap vinegar/soda/syrup

Vegetables

Stock
Quick pickles
Eat the stems! Most are edible (within reason!). If they are hard, cut them small and saute them with the onions at the beginning.
If the seeds are reasonably sized (e.g. pumpkins, butternut squash), clean and then toss the seeds with oil and seasoning, toasting in the oven.
Potato peels tossed in oil are a delicious snack.
Tons of garlic can become toum

Beans/Rice

Use the liquid for thickening soup
Water your outdoor plants with the leftover liquid
Hummus/bean dip
Soup
Congee

Bread

Stale slices make great french toast, bread pudding, or croutons
Freeze bread to be used in a toaster later
Crumble it up and thicken your soup
Sourdough discard can be used a ton of different ways!

Eggs/Dairy

Pickle your eggs
Freeze your cheese in portions
Freeze bread with cheese and seasoning on it, ready for toaster!
Milk can also freeze, used easy for cooking
Old milk is just buttermilk

Other

Olive juice from a can is delicious and can be added to most soups, rice, etc.
Bits of chips at the end of the bag can be combined into one mega bag. Scoops thrown on a rice bowl or into soup goes a LONG way, nice salty crunchy bomb

"I have too much XYX"

Meal prep! Make a whole lot of whatever at once. This is both a preventative measure to avoid this state, but also an in-the-moment remedy.

Process vegetables using a cheese grater, chopping, whatever, and then freeze them into portions. Particularly good for stuff like onions, garlic, etc., since it will be sauteed anyway.
If you have a juicer, you can blast through an excess of fruits or vegetables pretty quick. I try and get all my neighbors extra fruit off their trees, so it comes in big waves.
Portion freezeable elements in portions in the freezer (e.g. tomato paste, cheese)
Braise vegetables[2]; helps you use up lots of vegetables, stock, old wine, whatever.
Garbage soup. Put whatever you can or want into the soup and make it. With a strong base or stock, pretty much anything is good.
Quick pickles! They will keep for a long time and you can share with your friends, too!

References

Last modified: 202607250324