Sometimes you need to be creative in your frugal kitchen. You can’t always slavishly follow a recipe. I frequently adapt recipes to make use of what I have, and sometimes I just make it up. This is how my leftovers risotto came about.
Using up the leftovers
Using up the leftoversLast night I looked in the fridge and freezer and I had some shredded chicken from Sunday’s roast (frozen), half a punnet of mushrooms that were looking a bit sorry for themselves and half a jar of Spanish chicken sauce. So what to do with all these leftovers? I decided on a sort of risotto. This is what I did.
Leftovers risotto
Leftovers risottoFirst I fried the mushrooms in oil and a little butter with two cloves of garlic and two large shallots. Then I added a handful of frozen peas too. I cooked about 350g basmati rice and threw that on top with the half a jar of sauce, a can of tomatoes and half a glass of white wine that was lurking in the fridge. This was boiled it up for a bit and I added a couple of tablespoons of tomato purée, salt and pepper and some smoked paprika. Finally, I threw in the shredded defrosted chicken and warmed it through thoroughly. It was delicious! This fed three of us last night and we finished it for lunch today.
Simple, nutritious and it used up some leftovers that some folk would have ended up throwing in the bin. Here is what my leftovers risotto looked like.
What are your best leftover recipes? Do you hate waste? You can find more frugal recipes here.
Linda Kay says
Sounds really good…I usually make soup with leftovers.
Anona Mead says
last nights dinner was a trawl of the left overs, veggie hot dog plait. Last of the jar of cranberry sauce, half an onion chopped, squirt of garlic, half orange pepper chopped, third of a tin of chopped tomatoes, 4 v eggie hot dogs cut into chunks, pinch of salt and sprinkle of cayenne pepper all cooked up together then cooled and made into a plait with 4oz flour and 2oz marg pastry. Bake mk 5 30mins and served with the dregs of whatever veg was lurking in the freezer. went down a treat!
Clarissa says
I love how you used everything that was basically around the house 🙂 It’s important to check the kitchen and use up those ingredients before we buy more.
I’d love for you to checkout our recipes of all things leftovers and let me know what you think 🙂