(This is another in an occasional series about extreme frugality tactics that will save you money, while helping you live well. Here’s the backstory.)
Essayist and chef Tamar Adler has a fridge that sounds like mine. In her wonderful book*, “An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace,” she describes icebox shelves of “precariously full jars and tipping-over glasses unidentifiable liquids.” [As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a small fee for items bought through my links.]
These jars and glasses hold things like olive oil saved from dried tomatoes or jarred anchovies, leftover artichoke broth, or “the lovely, oily liquid left once a vegetable is cooked…that has collected the imprint of the good butter and olive oil, cloves of garlic, lemon peels, sprigs of thyme, splashes of wine, cracks of pepper, and vegetable that created it.”
Our fridge holds numerous liquid assets, too. So does our freezer. Not only does our extreme frugality mindset not allow us to waste food, it’s great fun to find ways to use these “potions,” as Adler calls them.
The juices that drain from purees of homegrown rhubarb or pumpkin end up getting frozen for smoothies. Last summer we canned five quarts of sour cherries; when pie-making, we drink some of the liquid (apparently it’s a superfood) and froze a certain amount to use in our second Pilgrim pumpkin pie re-enactment.
When I’m at the tail-end of a pint of home-canned rhubarb or applesauce or jam, or a jar of supermarket salsa, or even a bottle of catsup, I add a little water to the container and give it a good shake. The result gets added to a freezer container marked “vegetable cooking water,” which also collects the residue of boiled spuds or our super-sweet garden peas. The liquid is used, eventually, for cooking the contents of the boiling bag: veg/fruit peelings, cores, leaves and such. (The link explains it all.)
Our freezer generally holds three or four boiling-bag consommés, usually labeled “vegetable broth.” A few are less generic: “mostly onion and potato,” say, or “peapod broth” (a sweet green liquid that makes a superlative soup when cooked with split peas, smoked ham and a mirepoix that includes our homegrown celery and carrots).
Sometimes we don’t freeze our potato cooking water; instead, we use it to stir up that bonehead-simple, impossibly delicious rustic bread. Whey that I drain from my homemade yogurt (I prefer a thicker, Greek-style product) also gets used in this bread dough.
A splash of that whey might also end up in oatmeal, chili, stew, stroganoff or curry, and the spud water could be pressed into service for making a mess of beans. Speaking of beans: Sometimes I cook a big batch of black beans with olive oil, garlic, cumin and cayenne, then drain them for freezing – and the liquid gets frozen separately. Its robust flavor turns a more timid onion-potato consommé into one heck of a hearty soup.
Does all this sound parsimonious? We prefer to think of it as getting every last bit of nutrition from every food we cook. With inflation romping all over the nation’s grocery bills, we want to use everything about the pig – including the squeal.
Adler uses everything, too, but her being a chef gives a certain frisson to the experience:
“Use the potion from your Italian frying pepper pot to drizzle over rice. Or add it to a pot of warming tomato sauce. Save the lovely green murk from the Swiss chard pan to warm the Swiss chard tomorrow, which will be happier for the chance to spend time with yesterday’s more experienced cooking.
“The drippings from a pan of roasting meat are delicious on hot toast or mixed into cooked rice or cooking beans, or soups of either. … Or do the most sensible thing that you can in most kitchens at most times, which is put the tail ends of everything in a pot, season it well with salt, add a bit of cubed potato and some butter, and simmer it until it is all tender.”
Anyone else hungry now?
Meaty essences
Our freezer also has small containers and bags full of meaty essences and fats. When we cook meat, all pan juices go into a Pyrex measuring cup and set in the fridge (or outside, if it’s winter) to cool. The fat gets pried off and stored in bags labeled with the grease’s origin, so that we can match the meat to the meal: If it’s to be chili, I’ll sauté the onions and celery in beef fat, but if I’m making a mess of beans then I’ll use ham fat for the frying.
And the juice that remains in the Pyrex cup? That gets labeled and frozen, too: “smoky hen” (from chicken he cooked on the Weber) or “mud” (liquid collected from a Mississippi pot roast – which we keep calling “Mississippi mud roast” – done in the slow cooker).
And oh, the jars and bottles in our fridge. As mentioned earlier, an “empty” catsup bottle might become part of the vegetable cooking water. When a ranch dressing bottle is all but finished, I add a little milk, shake it up and stir it into my homemade potato salad.
The liquid from a can of pickled jalapenos goes into a Mason jar that’s big enough to accept a few roommates: green tomatoes from our yard, green beans from the same place, or some thinly sliced carrots.
Once a jar of cucumber pickles is finished, we save the brine until a mustard bottle is nearly empty. Shaken together, the two make a great addition to a soup that isn’t quite as zingy as you’d hoped, or to a skillet of ham and cooked lentils. Some people sip pickle brine after a workout, claiming that it helps them keep from getting leg cramps. I’ve been known to sip the liquid from our home-canned pickled red cabbage, because it tastes good; I don’t get leg cramps, but maybe that’s because I don’t run 10k races.
The bottom line
Again, the cost of food is going through the rafters. Why wouldn’t you want to get full advantage of every dollar you spend at the supermarket?
It’s more than that, though. As noted, finding new ways to use these liquid assets makes cooking a lot more interesting. It’s pretty easy to find a use for leftover meat or beans: You serve them as leftovers or turn them into soup or stew or sandwich spread.
But the liquid drained from cooked-down pumpkin (nobody wants watery pie filling!), or a nearly empty pickle jar, or the tail-end of my homemade raspberry jam** – now that’s a challenge we can’t resist.
Readers: Do you save brines, fats, vegetable cooking water or any other liquid assets? If so, please share!
Related reading:
- Extreme frugality: Use all the bits
- Good to the last drop: Getting full use of condiments
- Extreme frugality: Putting things by
*This is a wonderful series of essays disguised as a cookbook. It may change the way you cook, and also the way you look at food.
**Simplest and best use: Add a little milk, give the jar a good shake and drink the sweetly flavored result.
We save the different fats and broths. Also save milk getting near the end date by freezing it.
I often have a container in the freezer right now labeled “sour milk for cake.” DF uses it for waffles, too. Recently we scored a 99-cent gallon of organic whole milk that lasted for a fairly long time past its (already close) sell-by date. The rest became several lightning cakes in the past few weeks:
https://donnafreedman.com/cake-answer-question/
But of course. The potato water from the potatoes that accompanied the Sunday roast just landed in the bread bowl to help rise the yeast. When we lived in Virginia, a friend once pulled out my jar full of grease. “Oops, that’s your “drippins jar,” you should label it.” Spelling not being my strength, I wrote DRIPINGS on the mason jar lid. To this day they are known as
‘”dry pings” in our house!
Dry pings. Hee hee.
I expect it doesn’t surprise you that DF has a dry pings jar, too.
No it doesn’t! Loved the s#$# he says post!
Tommy seems fascinated by food items or leavings that I add to another dish. We try not to waste nutrition or flavor. He does not cook at all.
Diane, I love your sense of humor!
I save green bean juice (canned) and use it in my bread machine. This really started because an old neighbor, whose mother came from Italy let me in her kitchen. I am naturally nosy… Her mom used the leftover? mashed potatoes to make pizza dough, along with any water from cooking them up. It was so much fun cooking with her.
I’m not fond of many pickles, so I may throw some of that vinegar away!
When pregnant, I would open sauerkraut just to drink the juice. Yummy!
Thanks so much to you, Donna, and everyone that shares tips here. You are my forever community!
Thanks for being part of things!
The liquid from our canned green beans (and corn, and the occasional can of hominy) and our home-canned carrots winds up in the vegetable cooking water container in the freezer. When the liquid is from a jar of purple carrots, it makes quite a dramatic difference in the color of the resulting stock.
Enjoyed reading this. My fridge and freezer resembles yours. Waste not, want not.
I married a very finicky eater who won’t eat most leftovers so feeding him frugally is challenging. I save and reuse what I can that he will eat. The extent of my saving and reusing foods is boiling down turkey and ham bones to make stocks which I reuse in new meals. I make my own cheese and am interested in re using the whey.
I put a little bit of whey in each bowl of oatmeal I cook, and in various one-pot concoctions, and we use it for that rustic bread pretty regularly. If we have too much whey, it goes in the freezer as well.
Ha! Love that statement – “use everything about the pig – including the squeal!”
My boiling bag is most frequently used to make the broth to cook pinto or navy beans, Spanish rice or soup base. I really love reading all of these tips and ideas. I need to be more patient in dividing my scraps to different uses. Currently most all of it all goes in the same gallon freezer bag. I think because I am a little bit of a neat freak – seeing a bunch of baggies and bits piling up in the freezer at the same time bugs me. I need to change my mindset. The Adler book should be inspiring! Thanks Donna.
The “squeal” mention was, of course, a reference to the old saying about the Chicago slaughterhouses: “They use everything about the pig except the squeal.”
And yes, our freezer does get a bit cluttered at times. Luckily, we make soup (and gravy) often enough that things do get used up eventually. We do like having frozen broths for when we want a soup supper.
As someone who bikes and runs, I can tell you at biking/running stores they sell “pickle shots” in little bottles for a big price for athletes — its just overpriced pickle juice — BUY A JAR OF PICKES AND DRINK THAT! Haha..
I love pickles and do drink the juice, because I like it —
I also drink the water from cooking vegetables , something we used to tease my late Aunt about…..(she was raised during the depression and wasted NOTHING. Sometimes i freeze the veggie water in ice cube trays for use in smoothies.
Any coffee left in the pot gets frozen in the ice cube tray so I have cubes for future iced coffee.
And growing up, we were not allowed to toss a condiment bottle until we put a little water in it and used every last drop!!
Those are all great ideas. Thanks!
I remember reading that in some parts of China, it’s not unusual to drink the water left over from boiling eggs. Maybe there’s calcium in it…?
And: I would have a difficult time buying “pickle shots” — and not only because they’re overpriced. It has more to do with the fact that in moviemaking, a “pickle shot” refers to any scene with male frontal nudity.
My mother taught me to use the water used from boiling vegetables to make the gravy for the meal. This was done on Sundays with a roast of some sort (back when families had big Sunday dinners together). It was added to the pan drippings from the meat. Monday nights was always leftovers heated up in the same gravy. Delicious. I still do it and DH loves it.
Have to say I guffawed at your commentary on “pickle shots,” Donna. I learn something new from you all the time!!! On boiling bags and saving and savoring every last morsel—not just economical, but also delicious!!!
Tonight for dinner, we are having “pickety-bits”—various left overs from the last few days. Prince Charming (age 3 1/2) has requested his favorites—crackers and cheese with avocados and strawberries. I have those on hand, so that is what he is having.
I loved “An Everlasting Meal.” I recently picked up a book from the library entitled, “Cooking with Scraps.” Beautifully photographed, it had some wonderful ideas for using things that might be thrown away such as banana peels. Food is a precious resource.
Apparently she has a new book coming out in the near future. I am very interested in reading it.
I love the brine from olives. If I have a half cup I will add it to stew or chili for some extra umami. I add the juice from mandarin oranges to sweeten tea.
My sister pressure cooks chicken with pickle juice. (Make sure the brand is too heavily dyed or your chicken looks funny.)
What I really love is meat broth however. Chicken noodle soup tastes best when you pressure cook an entire bird and use the stock. For a price of a chicken on sale for $4, a couple sticks of celery, and a handful of noodles you can make six bowls. I also use homemade chicken broth to cook green beans or kale. I use beef broth for stew and to make mushroom soup.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
I save pickle brine – from dill and homemade bread and butter pickles to make homemade salad dressings. If using the bread and butter pickle juice, I make French dressing but omit the sugar my recipe calls for.
And of course….bacon grease for hash browns, American fries, cooking eggs, sauteeing onions and peppers….
I always have an assortment of jars of liquids and fats in my fridge and freezer. My 3 daughters-in-love get a kick out of my frugality but have never complained about my cooking.
I also save bread crumbs from slicing bread and cracker crumbs from the bottom of the sleeve. These are used in meatballs and meatloaf.
Butter wrappers are saved in a bag in the freezer and used to grease pans.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article and the comments. Thank you! Now I don’t feel so alone. 🙂
I just poured the salt out of a bag of finished pretzels. It will season a couple of soups or stews.
And no: You’re not alone! Welcome to the club.
I plan to use the leftover salt at the bottom of the pretzel barrel for the sidewalk, due to the recent snow and ice.
I have a boiling bag, too… Thanks to you from your MSN Money days! You called it garbage soup, and I’ve been saving my veggie scraps and making a veggie broth from it ever since. In fact, I just made a giant pot of the yummy liquid last week, and put most of it back in the freezer. I used some of it the next day to make rice. Sometimes I cook beans in it, or I use it as a base for a “cheater soup,” i.e. something I throw together quickly vs something that cooks for hours.
Also, I loved Tamar Adler’s book, it is full of good ideas and thoughts on planning and using everything up.