Using up leftovers
Using up leftovers turns what's left over into new dishes – stored safely, heated properly and often tastier than on the first day.
Ausführlich erklärt
Leftovers aren't a problem but a head start: yesterday's cooked rice, pasta, potatoes or vegetables are the quickest basis for today's meal. If you plan for leftovers – deliberately cooking an extra portion – you'll have lunch for work or school the next day without reaching for a ready meal.
Safety first: put cooked food in the fridge within two hours; according to Germany's Federal Centre for Nutrition (BZfE), it will keep there for two to three days. When reheating, everything has to get properly hot – the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) specifies at least 70 °C at the core for two minutes. Cool rice and pasta particularly quickly, because spores of the bacterium Bacillus cereus survive cooking and multiply at room temperature – so ideally eat leftover rice the very next day. Reheating once is fine; several times is best avoided.
The classics: rice becomes egg fried rice with vegetables or rice salad. Pasta becomes a pasta bake, or a cold salad with tomatoes and feta. Potatoes become sautéed potatoes (with a little oil in a non-stick pan), potato salad or oven-baked rösti. Vegetables of all kinds go into soup, a frittata, a wrap or onto a tray of roasted vegetables. Stale bread becomes croutons, breadcrumbs, bread salad or French toast. Brown bananas disappear into banana bread or porridge.
For weight loss, leftovers are even an advantage: cooled starch from potatoes, rice and pasta forms a little resistant starch, which acts like fibre and makes blood sugar rise more slowly. And if you take leftovers for lunch, you know exactly how big your portion is.
A tip so nothing gets forgotten: always put leftovers at eye level in the fridge, label them with the date and plan a fixed leftovers day each week. Children love turning “What's still in there?” into a guessing game.