13 habits food waste experts practice in their kitchens

Give yesterday's dinner—and that half a cabbage—a future.

At the grocery store, you're the one roasting the pumpkin. You make salads. You have exciting plans for fresh herbs. A week later, you're the one throwing away unused squash, lettuce, and wilted herbs.

Even food waste experts know the gap between the meals we imagine and the food we actually eat. Shelley Miller, who studies sustainability at the University of Michigan, knows how an acorn squash can end up in your cart without a plan. "It's fall. I'm feeling fall," she says, describing the temptation. That's why he and his wife try to stick to a shared grocery list — and know what they're going to do with what they buy.

We asked the experts what else they do to keep good intentions out of the trash.

Once a week, Miller bakes a potato and gives Luck a place to go in his refrigerator. Leftover fajita veggies? A little extra stuff on potatoes from other meals? They also continue.

"I always call it the trash potato, or maybe it's better to call it the kitchen sink potato," he says. Procedures vary enough to keep things interesting: "My husband always makes a guessing game of what my potatoes will be this week."

Potatoes solve a familiar problem: there's some leftover food, but not enough to call it lunch. Miller combines those small portions on what he wants to eat. "It's a great blank canvas," he says.

French fries can serve a similar purpose. But Miller knows where his loyalties lie: "My stuff is a potato."

Jonathan Deutsch has watched other cooks buy bags of broccoli, cut off the florets and discard the stems. He considers this a terrible loss. He says the tender inside of a broccoli stalk is "one of the tastiest vegetables."

Deutsch, professor of food and hospitality management and founding director of the Drexel Food Lab, cooks both at home. The night before we spoke, she made a broccoli salad with tahini and crispy chili peppers. The stem was woody on the outside, so he peeled it off, cut out the tender inside, and then air-fried it along with the florets.

Trim the wooden floor and remove the hard exterior if needed. Deutsch wants people to recognize the good food underneath.

"The same care and love that went into the flowers went three inches down the stem," she says.

Give your ingredients a second duty

A recipe that calls for half a cabbage leaves you with another decision: What about the other half?

Miller and her husband try to answer that before they start cooking. Cabbage rolls may take care of some. Soup or a roasted side dish, you can use the rest. The same thinking goes for tomato paste left in a can or extra chicken breasts in a package. "Being comfortable with different ways to prepare different ingredients really helps expand the menu," he says.

Deutsch begins by checking what's in her kitchen. When her daughters, now adults, would announce that there was something to eat, she could usually find the ingredients for a meal: a can of tuna, a can of beans or chicken in the freezer. He could only figure out what to buy after checking the inventory.

"Instead of producing more waste to deal with, you're taking extra food, and turning it into new things you want to eat," he says.

Brian Rowe is willing to commit to a Costco-sized bag of apples. He doesn't just put it on the counter.

"I'm kind of an apple guy," says Roe, a professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at Ohio State University who leads its Food Waste Association.

He keeps the apples in the refrigerator, where he says he rarely loses one to spoilage. At the counter, he'll likely throw a couple away before finishing the bag.

Miller knows what can happen to food you freeze with the best of intentions: "It just goes into the abyss of a freezer."

Eventually, he says, you clean it up and find "chicken breasts and peppers that burned in the freezer three years ago." "What happened?"

He and his wife now shop their freezer before deciding whether to shop or cook. Sometimes, that means they've already covered lunch for a week. Other times, it means remembering portions of tomato paste that were frozen just a spoonful after the recipe.

There are only two of them in the house, so a large batch can mean eating a dinner several nights on the run. "On the fourth day, the last thing you want is to be sadder.

Their approach: "We eat a day or two of leftovers. We freeze the rest." Then, when they need lunch another week, they can pick up a meal they haven't eaten in just three days in a row.

Miller's husband has figured out how to put leftovers in his freezer: He freezes soups and other liquids in zip-top bags on a pan. "It ends up like these little folders of soup," he says.

After freezing, thin packages stack well and take up less space than bulky containers. Use bags intended for freezing, leave room for liquid expansion, and follow safe cooling, storage, and reheating procedures.

Deutsch keeps a bag in her freezer for the parts of dinner that don't make it to the plate: onion slices, mushroom chunks, and green stalks. When he is ready to procure his stock, he begins to work.

"Stocks are like magic," he says. When people wonder why their soup doesn't taste as good as their favorite restaurant, he points to what may be missing: stock, with generous toppings. He also uses it instead of water when cooking rice, polenta or vegetables to give them extra flavor.

He is selective about what goes into stock. Add chunks of beetroot, he says, and "you can have a pink or brown sauce." Add broccoli florets, and "it can smell a bit like broccoli." This can be delicious in broccoli mac and cheese, but probably not the flavor you want in butternut squash soup. "You have to be a little strategic about what's going on there." he says

Roe's air fryer helps him squeeze out another meal from restaurant leftovers. He recently used it to reheat half a tuna steak and vegetables that his wife brought home. "It makes everything delicious and crunchy again," he says.

As he puts the food away, he thinks about the next meal and spends an extra minute letting the rest of the food warm easily. The goal, she says, is to "store your leftovers in a way that helps you want to use them next time."

Sometimes, that means turning last night's teriyaki chicken into today's salad. Her grown son has found another opportunity for leftovers: breakfast. "They're the freshest they'll ever be because it's the first meal after that," Rowe says.

Ask for more ideas before buying groceries

Ground turkey, two green peppers and feta cheese: Is that dinner? Deutsch suggests asking a chatbot before adding anything else to your grocery list.

He's been experimenting with AI to find ways to use ingredients and recommends giving it more than just a list of what's in the fridge. Tell him how much time you have, what equipment you use, and how comfortable you are in the kitchen.

“Make me an easy recipe with these ingredients,” he suggests training your AI platform of choice. You can also request something that takes less than 30 minutes, so you don't realize halfway through that dinner needs an overnight stay. "You can really customize it," he says.

Throwing away part of a chicken breast means wasting more of your dinner. It also wastes the resources used to raise and feed the chicken. Miller explains that animal products generally have a larger environmental footprint than plant-based foods, which leaves meat, eggs and dairy uneaten.

Miller and her husband still eat meat, but they have started serving smaller portions. "Meat is an accent to food," he says. They try to avoid a familiar conclusion: "We both have two large chicken breasts and waste a quarter of them."

Rowe describes herself as an evangelist for buying less food — a habit that has followed her home, she says, “maybe not for the happiness of everyone in my family.

As they mingle with people, Rowe tries to calculate what the guests will actually eat, while his wife follows the tradition of making sure there's enough to "feed an army."