Five recipes for the use-them-or-lose-them ingredients hanging out in your refrigerator.
From Sad Leftovers to Dream Dinners |
This is Priya Krishna, your replacement captain for this week's Five Weeknight Dishes. The Priya you see today has come a long way in the kitchen. My young, new-to-New York self had a simple but cost-effective weeknight cooking strategy: Buy the same few ingredients every week (pasta, spinach, tomatoes, feta, frozen dumplings, sausage, yogurt), throw a surprise item (sweet potatoes! cookie butter ice cream! an avocado!) into the cart, and make it all work with the rest of my pantry. |
The meals were sometimes mundane, but hey, I fed myself, saved money and wasted nothing. My fridge is fuller now. But I still firmly believe that working with what you've got and not overbuying groceries (child-free privilege alert!) are good principles for weeknight cooking. This newsletter is dedicated the to ingredients I tend to have in my fridge, which I think of as ticking time bombs, mere days from becoming food waste. These use-them-or-lose-them ingredients, more than anything, dictate what I cook. |
This is what I had left over one recent weekend: herbs, hot dog buns, ground meat, vegetable odds and ends (carrots, broccoli, onion), and dressed salad greens. And here are five recipes that came to the rescue. |
 | | Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. |
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I've tried all the clever hacks for keeping my herbs fresher longer. But at some point, you just have to use them. I like this Melissa Clark recipe because it calls for essentially whatever herbs you have on hand, chopped and stirred into a simple ricotta sauce that coats any kind of short pasta. This recipe is forgiving: Even if your herbs are droopy, the pasta will still taste great. |
 | | David Malosh for The New York Times |
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This one goes out to the half-used bag of hot dog buns from that summer cookout (sigh, one day they'll sell hot dogs and buns in the same quantities). They're a beautiful canvas for Kay Chun's crunchy, black pepper-forward shrimp rolls. If you're nervous to fry on a weeknight, don't be. The technique here — employing a quick cornstarch coating and a thin layer of oil — is easy. This recipe works with hamburger buns, too! |
 | | Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Hadas Smirnoff. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky. |
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Anyone else find themselves with a random lump of ground meat from when a recipe called for only 1/2 pound? Do as the chef Simone Tong did in this superfast recipe adapted by Tejal Rao and cook the meat with ginger, garlic and scallions. Make a vinegary dressing and serve it all with some cold noodles and herbs. Peanuts give the dish extra crunch and heft. |
 | | Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Judy Kim. |
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So you've got a half an onion, a single carrot and small handful of kale occupying valuable crisper real estate. Throw them on a sheet pan and make bibimbap. I have made this recipe, courtesy of Eric Kim, with all manner of hardy vegetables, and it works beautifully every time. A good reason to always have a tub of gochujang handy. |
 | | David Malosh for The New York Times |
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When in doubt, frittata it out! The frittata is a catchall for any and all foods lingering in your fridge. I recently had leftover arugula that was already lightly dressed, and rather than suffer through a slimy salad, I tossed it all into this frittata from Genevieve Ko. The bacon and cheese make even the most wilted of greens taste exciting again. I also love this pimento cheese variation from Vallery Lomas. |
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