Save your cooking liquids.
Tonight for supper we had some delicious chicken noodle vegetable soup. It was one of those meals when you look in the refrigerator and tell yourself it's time to use up some leftovers. We had some potato water left over from another meal. We also had some broccoli/veggie water from a couple days ago. And finally I used up the chicken broth that was left over from a batch of chicken I had baked in the overn.
First, I always save my cooking liquids if there is more than a cup left over. You can either freeze these liquids or store them in the refrigerator for about a week in bowls. One of the most common cooking liquids we use is potato water. That liquid makes great soup, tastes good in homemade breads, or can be used to cook pastas.
Second, I bake up large batches of chicken when I buy a 10 lb. bag of chicken leg quarters. I bake these at one time to save energy use of the oven. I put a little water in each of the containers and then after baking, save out the broth to be used in a soup. After deboning the chicken, I divide it up into meal size portions and freeze them, ready to be used in meals such as this chicken noodle soup. In fact, I didn't even need to thaw the package out today. I just thawed it enough to release it easily from the aluminum foil, and put the frozen chicken in the pot to let it thaw out the rest of the way while cooking up some carrots.
Then I had some old cauliflower and cabbage that had been in the refrigerator for awhile and had gotten frozen. We chopped those up, took off the brown spots, and threw them into the soup with other veggies from the freezer. In no time at all I had a delicious and healthy veggie noodle soup.
I apply the same principle with canned fruit juices. I don't drain those down the sink. I keep plastic containers with lids. When I drain some fruit, I put the liquid in one of those and freeze it.
What can you do with frozen fruit juices? I make my own pancakes from scratch. You can substitute the fruit juices for the milk in the recipes. Then I adjust down the amount of sugar in the recipe to accomodate the sweetening in the juices. My family loves the fruit flavored pancakes. We also use less syrup that way. The pancakes just taste too good to be covered up by syrup. You can also use the juices with other bread products. Just be aware that some fruit juices interfere with yeast action (pineapple comes to mind). But most of the time they are great in biscuits and muffins.
Some fruit juices make great homemade popsicles.
How would you use your leftover cooking liquids and fruit juices?
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Comments: 25
elaine d.
In answer to Renee's question, in any bread recipes, you can substitute some of the liquid required with the potato water. If you are replacing milk, you can do half and half if you still want some of the benefits and the flavor of the milk in your bread. You can do the same with gravies and soups. We make a lot of soups, so potato water never goes to waste in our home.
Meanwhile, I've discovered that the fat that drips off of cooking a roast is fantastic for collecting, freezing, and using later as the heated oil in the bottom of the pan for Yorkshire Pudding. Yorkshire Pudding is an English bread-like side dish (often served with Prime Rib), and it's a fantastic treat when adding back in the beef fat that otherwise languishes in a pan or is scraped into the trash.