BTS – Episode #5 – Leftover Love

Leftover love. Why do some people hate leftovers while others make extra food just to have them because they love leftovers? We'll talk about the ins and outs and dos and don'ts of leftovers and much, much more today on bending the spoon. But before we get to that, I'd like to remind you that if you like recipes, go to bonicellicookingclub.com and sign up for my email list and check out all of the options of participating in the club.. And if you like what you hear today, hop over to Podchaser.com and leave Bending The Spoon a positive review. Also, for the video version of this podcast, subscribe to Bonicelli Cooking Club on YouTube. Now, let's talk about leftovers. Everyone has a stance on leftovers from a holiday meal and leftovers in general. Some people love them, even plan extra food to have them while other people pack leftovers up and give them away just to get them out of the. The term leftover in and of itself implies subpar quality, even low class, something you'd never served a company and not as good as the first time around. Now, I don't have to tell you that it's not always a case. Sometimes food improves in flavor after time. For example, my father's chili was better on the second. My balsamic beef pot roast better on the second day, even the third. In fact, I usually make it a day or two ahead so I can reheat it to serve. So technically, even though I didn't eat any of it, it's leftover for me. Creative use of leftovers is a big part of how I plan my menus for the week. I maximize the potential of the food and I minimize waste. I created a business based on those principles, so I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert, and those skills are particularly handy now with food prices being what they are. But I think that many people don't think that strategically, probably because they weren't brought up with that and haven't developed the mindset to plan for leftovers. I wasn't brought up that way either. I learned how to manage food when I became an adult, and really when I started cooking professionally, so much changed with food in the early 1950s and 1960s. There was a huge transition away from cooking. I was born in the middle of all of that during that time, so fast food and frozen meals were a big part of my growing up. We had a stack of Swanson TV dinners in the freezer and a set of TV trays by the television. Friday nights, we had fish sticks and frozen fries because we were Catholic. Unless it was a holiday, there wasn't a lot of actual cooking going on. And when there was, occasionally my mother would make her version of chop suey, which was delicious, or my father would make his chili right on the second day. But by the time the third day rolled around, it wasn't special anymore. Holidays were a whole different story. There was a lot of cooking and it was pretty festive, aside from the fact that my grandmother usually contributed a homemade pasta and a couple of amazing side dishes and her fantastic cranberry sauce. Our Thanksgiving meals were pretty typical, Midwestern fair, Turkey, mashed potatoes gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes and brown sugar, and marshmallows, and some sort of jello cool whip thing. Oh, and pie. We'd have leftovers for days, and by the time we were done, we were happy to wait a year to do essentially the same meal all over again. Now judging by the amount of frozen prepackaged food in the stores and skyrocketing sales for home delivered restaurant food companies, I'd say that many people only deal with leftovers on holidays. The trick is knowing what works, what reheats well, how to reheat it, what will freeze, and what just won't hold up more on some leftover food management ideas in a minute, but for now, it's time for our featured ingredient. This week's featured ingredient is the mushroom. I love mushrooms. Here in Minnesota, we have so many resources for beautiful mushrooms. We have several companies that forage and others that grow mushrooms in controlled environ. I've even been lucky enough to happen upon a few morels popping up in my yard. Now, from a culinary standpoint, mushrooms are delicious and earthy with each type being distinctive in shape, texture, and flavor. Now, I've always known that mushrooms are good for you, but a couple of years ago I read in food and wine that a quarter cup of mushrooms per day could reduce your chances of getting any type of cancer by 30 to 40. Any type of cancer, 30 to 40% a quarter cup done. Mushrooms are linked to so many other positive health outcomes, and here are just a few improved. Sleep, reduces stress, alleviate seasonal allergies, boost immunity. They are super high in antioxidants. They also may mitigate the risk of developing other serious health conditions such as Alzheimer's, heart disease and diabetes. And don't forget cancer. Medicinal mushrooms have been used in Eastern medicine for thousands of years and have gained even more popularity as of light here, usually sold as a powder or tinctures. You'll see them added to all kinds of things, even smoothies and latte. One of the easiest ways to get your mushrooms, though is to add them to your omelet or your stir fry, your pasta sauce, or just saute or roast them as a side dish. Note that mushrooms aren't a cure all. In fact, studies are still new to Western medicines, so think of them more like little helpers for your immune system, working hard against stress, inflammation, and cancer. Mushrooms are this week's featured ingredient. Okay. I have to be honest with you, other than their astounding and impressive health benefits and general deliciousness, I decided to feature mushrooms because I have a recipe I want you to try. This recipe is the highest use of leftover Turkey meat that I can think of. Please go to my website and get the Chicken Tetrazzini recipe. Skip the chicken part in the recipe and use your leftover turkey. Chicken Tetrazzini. And now Turkey Tetrazzini is an American dish named after an Italian opera singer who was debuting as Gilda in Rigoletto in San Francisco in the early 1900's. My version of this recipe is large, a full nine by 13 inch pan to the brim. So again, you'll have leftovers. But the cool thing is it freezes beautifully. Make it, eat it, freeze it. You will love it. No doubt. Your inbox is like my inbox today is after all the day after Thanksgiving, and it's inundated aside from Black Friday stuff. It's inundated with creative leftover ideas. Now this year, my favorite one, which I'd never make, but it made a really interesting picture, was a sandwich with literally everything from the big day's dinner. Layered inside of it. It had turkey, stuffing potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, some corn concoction of some sort, cranberry sauce and it was all on bread with a gravy. Dipping sauce. I think most families have some traditional leftover strategy for their traditional foods. Now, my brother would take charge of the pumpkin pie, often taking it to his bedroom for safe keeping. He, by the way, had a special set of rules in the house. US girls never would've gotten away with that, but he thought it made a good breakfast and wanted to stake his claim. For me, my routine is I slice some of the Turkey for sandwiches. I usually freeze it for later, and I shred the rest for the tetrazzini or whatever new dish I'm working on that can use leftover Turkey. The Turkey carcass goes into a pot of water to start the Turkey soup, which I always make with barley because if I decide to freeze it, the barley holds up. Well. Other than that, I usually plan a completely different meal for the day after Thanksgiving, so that when I pull out the leftovers the next day, there's a little distance between having essentially the same meal twice. And I have another idea for you. It's time for our tip of the week. The tip of the week is a leftover idea with a recipe, and that idea is to make stuffing muffins. That is muffins out of your leftover stuffing. Other added ingredients. This is a flexible recipe because your stuffing is already done, so feel free to play around with what you add, given what you have leftover. I'd say the only thing you really need to stick to is the amount of stuffing, five cups and the number of eggs. Three. Here's the recipe grease, a 12 cup muffin tin, and preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahn. Put five cups of leftover stuffing in a large bowl. Add two thirds of a cup of shredded cheddar or your favorite cheese, a half a cup of chopped roasted Turkey, a half a cup of chopped cooked vegetables, one tablespoon of chopped herbs of your choice, and three beaten eggs. Stir all of that together and if the mixture seems dry, stirring up to one half cup of chicken or Turkey stock, spoon the mixture into your tin. Bake in the 350 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes until the muffin tops are lightly browned and crisp. Cool. The muffins for 10 minutes. Remove them from the tins to a cooling wrap. Now you can serve them warm or cool them completely and refrigerate for later. Our family stuffing, my dad's that he never wrote down is a bread stuffing with Italian sausage and sage. That stuffing is absolutely fabulous as a stuffing. Make stuffing muffins and that is your tip of the week. You are listening to Bending the Spoon, the podcast dedicated to making you a better cook. I'm Chef Laura Bonicelli, and I want to remind you that if you like recipes, go to Bonicelli cooking club.com and sign up for my email list and check out all of the options of participating in the club. And if you like what you hear today, hop over to Podchaser.com and leave bending the spoon of positive review. Also, for the video version of this podcast, subscribe to Bonicelli Cooking Club on YouTube. Now back to our episode. Did you know that there are still Tupperware parties? Maybe it's just me. I don't travel in the right circles anymore or something, but I had no idea. I mean, I was sure Tupperware was around, but I didn't know the home party was still a thing. I used to get invited to those all the time, so my cabinets were full of this stuff. If you were invited, you had to buy something, even if you didn't attend the party. There was no written rule about that. It's just how it was. So it was kind of a lot of pressure. But Tupperware did design a container for every possible situation, and for a long time they were the gold standard in food storage. Now, Tupperware was invented in 1946 by a guy whose last name was, It's amazing to me that they did so well when people, mainly women in America were cooking less because they started working and weren't home. It must have been those pictures of those entire cabinets and refrigerators filled with. Perfectly stacked, colorful, beautiful Tupperware. It made. You just have to have it. But I don't have any Tupperware nesting bowls anymore. I prefer simplicity in food storage. A few things that do a lot instead of a lot of things that only work for one thing and also lots of containers and do dads I never use. And lids. I really like interchangeable Li. So there are some cool companies out there doing cool things with food storage. I've got a link in the show notes to view some of my favorites. In a commercial kitchen glass is basically not used because of potential breakage at home. I have some glass and ceramic food storage containers that I love, um, trying to keep the use of zip locks and to a minimum. But for most of my food storage, I use one type of container. I'll tell you more about it in our Top Tool. There are so many ways that being a professional chef has influenced my home kitchen, and it certainly has when it comes to storing food. Now, since we're talking about leftovers, I thought I'd share my favorite storage containers for most of my leftovers stocks and freezable items, and they are pint and quart deli containers with lids. Why do I love these so much? Well, they are reusable and they are inexpensive. They are plastic. And that's sort of a downside because the world has a big plastic problem, but for food storage, glass is an issue because it can break. Now plastic can break two, but these are pretty durable and as I said, they are reusable. My favorite thing about them is they come in two cups and four cups, and it's great to know that because I often use them to measure liquids, and I always know how much of any given item I have that comes in very handy with stocks and leftovers. Another great thing is they stack inside each other completely, so you don't need a dedicated Tupperware cabinet. They store efficient. So that's my top tool. Pint and Quart Deli containers with lids. You can find out more and where to get them. On my Benable site, there's a link in the show notes. My husband and I were talking the other night about saving food that you have absolutely no intention of eating. You know, put the leftovers in the fridge to time out so you can throw them away without feeling guilty. Now the only time I've done this. I believe is when I've been making something that I didn't like. I try not to do that either, but I'm an inventor when it comes to cooking, so I experiment when I'm writing recipes, and even though I don't like it, I'm not afraid of failing. So every once in a while I do. We always give it a fair shot and taste and discuss it, and then it goes into the fridge and the clock starts ticking. Speaking of a ticking clock, if you're wondering how long things really do keep in your refrigerator, I have a fantastic free app suggestion for you. It's called Food Keep. It was developed as a joint project between Cornell University's Department of Food Science, food Marketing Institute, and the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service. That was a mouthful. You can even enter the food in your refrigerator into it, and it will alert you when it needs to be tossed. When I first started cooking, I wasn't fond of leftovers. Maybe because I was obsessed with cooking and once I made something, I wanted to move on and make something else. But I realized early on that managing leftovers well is a significant part of successful home cooking. If you wanna have food for you and your family that is healthy and delicious, if you wanna save money, which is critical to everyone right now, it takes planning and a lot of knowledge. So here are some things to think about. How long will each leftover last? What are you going to simply reheat and eat? What can be frozen and what can be an element of a completely different dish. And of course, that should be my Turkey tetrazzini and the stuffing muffins. The next episode of Bending the Spoon is about America's obsession with competitive cooking. I'm calling it cooking and traumatic tv. Till then, Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Bending the Spoon. If you like this episode or if you think someone else would find it useful, please leave a review on pod chaser.com, and if you have any questions for me, find me on Instagram or YouTube or go to bonicellicookingclub.com and leave me a message. Thank you, and go and make some magic in your kitchen.