It's inevitable to have leftovers from three meals a day. What should be done with them? Throwing them away feels wasteful, but keeping them to eat again often makes the food taste and texture worse. Learn these three tricks to give your leftovers a new and unique flavor.
Everyone should follow the principle of "it's better to have leftover meat than leftover vegetables." The good news is that, apart from vegetables, it's not difficult to repurpose leftover meat. It all comes down to three main techniques: changing the cutting method, altering the seasoning, and adding new ingredients.
1. Change the Cutting Method
Large pieces of meat are best suited for this method. Slice them, dice them, or chop them, and then cook them with fresh vegetables, whole grains, etc. For example, you can dice pork, shred chicken, or slice braised pork into shreds. Then, mix them with cold-dressed vegetables or use them as fillings for pies and spring rolls.
2. Change the Seasoning
The purpose of changing the seasoning is twofold: to alter the dish's flavor and to adjust its saltiness. For instance, if you have braised shrimp leftovers, you can remove the oil, add some tomato sauce, and transform it into tomato-flavored shrimp with a completely different taste.
3. Add Ingredients
Adding ingredients is essentially a way to introduce more vegetables to a new meal without increasing the amount of meat, which helps improve nutritional balance. For example, if you have leftover braised pork ribs, you can add onions, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, corn, etc., to make a stir-fry of ribs with fresh vegetables.
You can also transform leftovers into soups. For instance, add vegetables and flat noodles to leftover braised pork ribs to make a vegetable and pork rib noodle soup. Or, add wood ear mushrooms and dough drops to leftover scrambled eggs with tomatoes to create a tomato-flavored dough drop soup.
If you have leftover staple foods, you can still follow the three methods mentioned above. Finally, it's important to remember that when reheating leftovers, you must cook them thoroughly to avoid causing digestive discomfort.