26 Recipes That Are Even Better as Leftovers (2024)

FAQs

What meals are better as leftovers? ›

Turn Scraps into Healthy Meals

What can you do? Try these ideas: Add leftover vegetables or stems from a vegetable — think broccoli stalks — to a vegetable soup, casserole or stir fry. Toss wilted spinach and overripe bananas into smoothies.

By reimagining leftovers into new meals, you can make them a little more exciting and even have some fun in the process. Depending on the original taste and seasoning of your leftover meal, you can add leftover meat, vegetables, or seafood to a new creation such as fried rice, pasta, casseroles, tacos, or soup.

Stretch any leftover meat (chicken, steak, taco meat, pork chops, etc.) by chopping it up, mixing it with cooked veggies, cheese, and spices (such as chili powder and cumin), placing it all between two whole-grain tortillas and pan frying it for a whole new meal. Sweet potato is a great vegetable for this.

Some proteins, including beef and chicken, as well as most ground meats, reheat beautifully, while seafood is best avoided. Fish and shellfish tend to get stinky stored in the fridge and it's very hard to reheat them successfully.

Breakfast is often considered the most important meal of the day, but should it be? For some, skipping breakfast can be detrimental to their day — especially for kids — but others may feel better fasting until lunch. Experts agree that while breakfast provides benefits, one meal isn't more important than the other.

What is the best leftover food to microwave? ›

Reheating grains, such as rice, pasta, or quinoa, in the microwave is a convenient option, and in our opinion, it's the easiest kind of food to reheat.

The State Sanitary Code now requires that the entire mass of all cooked and refrigerated potentially hazardous food which is to be reheated must be reheated to 165 degrees Fahrenheit or above within two hours, and held above 140 degrees Fahrenheit until served.

Enhanced Flavors.

Many dishes improve with time. Soups, stews, and sauces often taste better the next day after their ingredients have had more time to meld together. That's not myth, that's science. Flavor molecules have more time to make their way around a dish the longer the dish sits.

After 3 to 4 days, germs, also called bacteria, may begin to grow in refrigerated leftovers. This growth increases the risk of food poisoning, also called foodborne illness. Bacteria typically don't change the taste, smell or look of food. So you can't tell whether a food is dangerous to eat.

Yes, it's good to eat leftovers. It's a simple way to save money and eat healthier. Leftovers may even last longer in your fridge than you'd think. Chef Ned Bell shares a few tips below on how to handle leftovers and how long they'll last.