As title suggests, in your opinion what are some of the best recipes you know that have good leftovers?
We hate cooking everyday, and love when there are leftovers, especially tasty leftovers. What dishes in your recipe book lend themselves to tasty, easy to reheat leftover meals?
Cottage pie is probably the one I can think of that is dominant in our household. Cheap and tastes almost the same reheated.
Pasta for us.
I also like to do pita wraps/donairs sometimes that last us a couple days. Just cut up all the ingredients on the first day and then it’s just an easy warm up the pita and stuff it with the chicken and veg the next day. Works well for taco mix too like ground beef, just swap the pita bread for tortilla.
What do you put in the pita wraps specifically?
I make them with chicken thighs (marinated with this recipe), then hummus, tzatziki, lettuce, tomato, red onion, feta, and sriracha.
Usually the chicken thighs hold well in the fridge for 3-4 days, just nuke them with a bit of water for moisture.
Sounds good, I will have to try that. Sounds almost like a chicken gyro
Bolognese and chilli are awesome. They usually taste better the next day since the sauce had time to soak in all the flavours from the spices we use.
Soups are also really good and full of flavour. Our current favourite is a coconut milk rice noodle soup with lemongrass and curry paste in it. Tastes really fresh, a little spicy, and the rice noodles add a nice consistency to the meal. Top it off with some fried, marinated tofu and you’re golden
Roast chicken.
Cook a bird on Sunday afternoon and pick on the remains all week.
Baked beans.
Super easy to make, not hard to make delicious, taste just as good the next day, freeze really well.
If u have a leftover ham bone y can add that in as well gives u a nice flavour and u get some nice meety chunks as a bonus.
Yessss.
Meat and bone scraps are so great to cook with.
And add a carrot and an onion and baby, you got a stew going.
Honestly I can’t remember the last time I cooked something WITHOUT carrot and onion.
Similarly, black beans.
I don’t like leftovers. I prefer when it gets made into something else.
Roast chicken becomes soup, tacos, or enchiladas.
Grilled steak or chicken gets chopped up and put in the freezer to make quesadillas.
Chili becomes chili dogs or chili con carne on cheese enchiladas.
My mom used to cook a couple pounds of ground beef and then season bits as needed for tacos, sloppy joes, or spaghetti.
Rice and beans yumm
Any stew type thing is generally easy to scale up and usually follows the “better the next day” character. Goulash, curries, thick soups (beef barley is my favorite), and chillis.
There’s no change in texture from reheating, which I think is key to good leftovers. Anything baked is going to dry out yet not be crisp, and anything fried is going to be soft and sad. Applying these principles to other things, and you come across things like lasagna as well.
For stuff that is baked, grilled, or pan fried, if it’s something you can cook a bunch of, but pull most of it when it’s 80% done, you can sometimes reheat that ok. We’ll make 4 burgers out of a pound of meat, and either cook up 2 and just leave the other 2 for tomorrow, or say, pull 2 off when they’re pretty rare, and cook the ones we’re eating to medium. Then the next day, by the time the patties are heated through, they’re to the right doneness.
Chilli con carne + rice
Spaghetti bolognese
Lasagna
Spinach & ricotta canneloni
Slow cooked braised beef & penne
Thai green curry + rice
Slow cooked butter chicken + rice
Slow cooked lamb korma + rice
Soups (pumpkin, potato & leek, pea & ham, etc)Also we tend to freeze batches of leftovers without pasta/rice as it saves a lot of space in the freezer and throwing some fresh rice or pasta is little effort while the frozen meal container defrosts (fresh rice & pasta is much better, but frozen does work for a true reheat-only meal)
Curry always tastes better the next day.
Not Japanese curry. It can get kind of grainy.
Lasagna
Vermicelli rice. Next day I make it into fried rice or mix it with minced meat, egg and fried onions making some meat balls.
What is vermicelli rice?
https://everylittlecrumb.com/vermicelli-rice/
Learned it from my Egyptian brother in law
Chili. Almost any stew, really. They only get better when they sit longer.
I was going to post a link to Once A Month Meals (or is it Cooking?) but it looks like they charge a subscription now. A lot of sites have freezable recipes now.
Anyhow, it’s different than leftovers. Cooking lasagne? Make 4 trays. Burritos? Make 25. The key to freezer meals is to cool them completely before freezing and wrap it tightly or else you’ll get frost. For pasta, get those tin trays and use press&seal to store. For burritos, wrap in parchment paper, then foil as foil can stick to the tortilla.
Nice of you to call it: Cottage Pie.
That’s a big pet peeve of mine.
If I want to prep for multiple days and eat good after the prep, I’m making freezer friendly burritos.
Refried beans, rotisserie chicken, diced raw onion, and cheese. Heat up the couple I’m eating then, and throw the rest in freezer bags. Reheats well in the microwave, and I just toss it on some shredded iceberg along with a hefty bit of Cholula on top. Fake chicken and without cheese works good too if you’re vegan.
The only other thing I do in batches is Chili like so many others suggested. I’d do more if it weren’t for a shared kitchen that’s a staircase away from my fridge.
When I do burritos, I refrigerate the hot fixings separately and only heat what I’m going to eat. I can usually get the food to last for a week in the fridge.
