Why Expendable Edibles Can’t Spoil Our Day

At this very moment in our kitchen, and kitchens around the world, there’s an expendable edible on the menu. Maybe it's because of some quirk in our make-up (or upbringing?), but we just can’t bring ourselves to throw out foods that are perfectly good but not perfect. And that's how Expendable Edibles came to be. We wanted a special recipe site for people who feel the same way we do. So that whenever you find yourselves staring at that bruised mango in the fruit drawer or that tiny tub of chopped onions in the fridge, you'll come here - to this growing community cookbook - to get inspired, add your own expendable edible recipes, or challenge us to come up with a brand new recipe for your unique situation.

After years and years of gleeful experimentation, we've developed a culinary witness protection program of sorts - one in which expendable edibles are given entirely new identities, and what identities they are!

Tired tomatoes and grapes – sliced to sweeten coconut-infused Duck Curry sauce
Matured potatoes and impressionable avocados –puréed into a Columbian vichysoisse
Tattered watermelon – soaking up the last drop of rum in corn relish
Nearly expired jars of anchovies, olives and tuna – dressed up and ready to shimmer as tapenade
Headless chocolate bunnies – melted into an elegant ganache topping

The shocking truth is not how many home chefs throw out perfectly good food that just isn't perfect anymore, but how few opportunities there are for cooks to share their expendable edible recipes and treatments. In kitchens across the world, expendable jewels are used all the time to deepen flavors. To be shape-shifted into tints or garnishes, like beet-tinted risotto. To create new textures, such as cookie crumb layers or trifles. And along the way, expendable edibles are improving our health with a vitamin and mineral blast otherwise lost if tossed, as with Creole Potato Crisps from baked potato peels.

Ask any professional chef; the “use it or lose it” anthem has been drummed into their heads since culinary school. (The Larousse Gastronomique, the bible of classical French cooking, is built on a model of complete utilization.) Yet professionals are not supposed to disguise ingredients inside other dishes. It is in bad taste ... Well, no longer. Now they can.

By inventing an umbrella name ("Expendable Edibles")and a vocab to match, we're bringing the subject out of the closet, making it acceptable, sexy and in the current economic clime - even hip to talk about expendable edibles. Our test kitchen has come up with six clear instances when the kitchen spirits are going to demand a conscious choice: Will you make something divine out of this non-essential, or send it on a one-way ride down the disposal?

Turning around your food’s karma is good for you and good for the planet. But what's really fun for us is using our wits, connecting with our creative cook and not letting anything spoil our day. In the words of Alexander Graham Bell: "When one door closes, another door opens."

It’s Not My Fault

Of course, it’s not your fault. Nobody deliberately shops for expendable edibles; they just happen. Most of the time, expendable edibles are the result of human nature colliding with Mother Nature and/or technology:

Refrigerator and freezer doors swing open and shut all day, contributing to temperature spikes and dips, speeding up the spoilage timeline already underway.
The fruit bowl near the window is exposed to unnecessarily high heat, humidity, oxygen, and sunlight, depending upon which direction your windows are facing.
Sometimes the damage is done before you even get home. What about the physical stress at first plucking? The chill factor injury encountered during transportation? Packaging weaknesses at the store that create condensation? That rough little teenager who bagged your groceries?

We could play it safe and do what Europeans do: buy unpackaged foods on a daily basis. Or buy only foods low in moisture, high in sugar, salt, or acid levels. But then we wouldn’t be Americans and do some of the things we do best: overstock, over-buy, and under cook. The end game is that we tend to play Russian roulette with heat, moisture, oxygen, light, microorganisms, food-borne pathogens, food enzyme activity, chemical reactions ... and time.

“Eat by” deadlines assigned to your foods vary wildy - enough to send the most organized home cook running for take-out. If you ask us, we think the smarter approach is utilizing your perishables in ingenious ways as they cross into Expendible Edible Country.

The Fine Art of Recovery

After the groceries have settled in for a while in your fridge, freezer and counter tops, keep your eyes open. Catching un-lovables on the brink is pure sport.

Be aware that expendable edibles fall into three key groups:

Foods needing immediate attention (Stems, Skins & Stalks)
Consumables that can take a number and wait patiently in the fridge or freezer (Past Peak, Once-Cooked and Negligible Quantities, Ill-Fated Creations)
Edibles that can remain preserved for weeks on end but may die sometime during our lifetime (Nearly Expired)

So, don’t dilly dally. Rescue your perfectly good food immediately.

Endnote

Using expendable edibles can turn you into a citizen of the world. Pulling off gourmet dishes can mean some days going overseas for inspiration. This might involve nothing more than a little added complexity, ethnic fusion in flavor, texture, and presentation.

But like all good chefs, there are limits. Not everything is a go and here are the important guidelines:

Always start with fresh ingredients (cleaned with running water, a veggie brush or paring knife, if necessary)
Assess what’s on hand and be open to substitutions
Remember: foods that lose their beauty pageant looks still have plenty of culinary spunk
Have fun morphing foods from one texture to another by heating, freezing, food processing, baking, etc.
Get unglued from the recipe card and exact measurements (with the exception of baking which requires more precise chemistry). As you cook, keep tasting and adjusting

Yes, some will laugh at your noble work. But in our book, you’re saving the world.

- Nancy & Marlene