Cooking saving hack Part 1 - Planning to eliminate waste

Save! Maybe about $0.50 on heating and water per cook, depending on how frequent you cook and the proportions. If you cook often, this adds up.

The long and the short of it

Plan your meals so you only need to cook once in awhile and have little to no waste. It's also more environmentally  friendly!

If you cook pasta, cook it with a stew to use the starch water.

Save any fat rendered out from crisping bacon or roasting chicken.

Local tips!

Use sturdy reusable plastic food containers to freeze your stews and meals for another day.

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I hate food wastage and I try my best to use up all and I mean all that I put in the pans. I just hate throwing out anything in the kitchen. The best way for processed food bits is to the compost heap (which I don't have and don't know how to start... yet) or into the stomach.

Fat Drippings
Starting off, I save all fat drippings and freeze them to use in mashed potatoes, bruschetta, salads or for simple stir-fries. Chicken fat, bacon fat whatever fat that's rendered off, I pour off and save. These drippings are flavor bombs and can and should be reused! There are entire forums dedicated to this (e.g. Chowhound, SeriousEats, CookingJunkies)
You might say the fat is unhealthy etc but you should just listen to common sense, which is to have everything in moderation.

As long as you're not drinking it by the gallon, you'll be fine...

Image taken from Butterbeliever, like many a home chef converted, also thinks like I do!

Pasta Water
For awhile now, I have been thinking of how to save my pasta water as I hate to pour them into the sink since:
1) it's a waste of about 2-3 litres of good clean food grade water (the horrors of waste!)
2) starch being starch, it might clog the drain

So I thought, since I love to do up big batches of stews and need water and starch from potatoes to thicken them, I might as well cook these two meal items together. Cooked pasta water becomes the water base for stews and the pasta starch will also help to thicken the stew! 
2-in-1 ah!
Just moderate the salt level accordingly i.e. use less salt in the pasta water.

So now, I try my best to plan pasta with a stew. Then I'll partition the stew into plastic food containers (reusable ones mind you) and freeze them for later consumption.

Frozen foods can last indefinitely but the tasty stews normally don't last more than 2 weeks. Just remember to thaw the stew first before you pop it in the microwave. No point wasting good energy heating up frozen food. Let Singapore's sunny weather do that for you.

So this is a simple cooking hack. Save energy, save your pockets and save the Earth.


What are some of your cooking hacks to save on gas and food waste?
Share them with me in the comments section!