Got a plate of leftovers just wasting away in the fridge? Well I’ve got a solution for you! Recycling food is an important and often overlooked way to reduce waste and improve sustainability. One creative way to recycle food is to turn it into a flavorful soup.

For a base you will need some sort of leftover broth, or one could even make broth by boiling vegetables, chicken, fish, or beef bones. Soups can be very versatile, so my suggestions can be amended by whatever options you have available at home.

Once you have a broth of some sort then it’s time to add some greens. Many people have excess frozen vegetables in the freezer or left over salad in the fridge. Both options could work well in a soup. However, be careful with leafy greens, because they can make your soup bitter. You could also use vegetable peels to add some flavor to your soup.

I often add left over buckwheat or quinoa, which makes for a great source of carbs within a soup. This also adds to the texture of the soup.

Once your concoction is prepared, the first step is to boil the broth to a simmer. Once that is done you should slowly add your ingredients based on which are frozen and which are not, adding the frozen items in first. Since some of the ingredients have been cooked before it is important to not warm your soup for more than five minutes so that it doesn’t turn into mush.

And for a final touch, one may include some spices to really add some zest to their recycled meal. Some may have rosemary or bay leaves growing in their garden which could be incorporated in their soup or have some spices laying in their cabinet waiting to be used. It’s important to experiment with the soup, you would be surprised what new flavors you could discover!

Caption: An estimated 119 billion pounds of food goes to waste in the United States each year. Reusing leftover scraps from previous meals is a great way to encourage the creation of innovative new meals. Photo courtesy of Saule Kondra.