This year, I've made an effort to get better at cutting down on food waste. Not only is preserving leftovers better for the planet, but it also helps with saving pennies. Plus, as a keen cook, I like the challenge of getting inventive with ingredients and scraps leftover in my kitchen as it often requires some lateral thinking.
Of course, there are major investments that can help with leftovers, like one of the best air fryers for speedily reheating leftovers.
But these gadgets are a little more outside of the box, inspired by some of my favourite Instagram accounts that inspire me to jazz up leftovers and food prep more generally: @ellypear, @tamingtwins and @thefullfreezer. With their can-do attitude to leftovers in mind, here's my list of little buys that can make leftovers much, much easier to deal with.
The gadgets to help with leftovers
Christmas might be the most leftover heavy time out there, which is when these buys will be fantastic to have in your arsenal. My favourite is large glass food storage containers for stashing your freezer full of make-ahead meals.
I've tried many different sandwich and freezer bags. Nothing beats these IKEA ones which also feature a very handy Ziplock. Using these bags in innovative ways has transformed the way I keep leftovers and how I batch cook. One of my absolute favourite hacks when organising a freezer that also saves space is to freeze sauces or gravy flat, which I saw over on @thefullfreezer's Instagram.
I love cooking at Christmas, but there is a way to make it a more efficient process. When you're cooking your family meals over the festive period, enact the 'eat one, freeze one' mentality a la @tamingtwins and her chicken pie recipe and save yourself so much time for January. These huge Pyrex containers are perfect for pies and bakes and if you cook two, you can also stash one away in the freezer for a very speedy, healthy New Years meal. Genius.
This is a pricey pick I know, but I've been using this set for a couple of months now as I mentioned in my kitchen essentials piece and there's no overstating how much it does to keep food fresh. Take any fresh food (veg, fruit, meat) and pop it into the glass container or bags. Then use the small handheld vacuum to extract all of the air from inside and your food will keep up to 4 times longer than usual. It means I can shop less, safe in the knowledge that my veggies are still good.
One thing that really levels up your leftover game is making stock with leftover food scraps. But once you've made it, the thing that will keep that stock tiding you over for meals and soups all month long is this silicone tray, which is the perfect design for storing more than just ice. It's so easy to get the frozen stock out to heat up on the hob, or you could even store soup in it. You can even use it
This is the only gadget on this list I haven't tried myself yet, but I think it would be so useful to pull out of a cupboard if you have any leftover cream. It comes complete with a paddle so that you can churn your own butter at home and nothing is stopping you from getting creative and adding in your own flavours too.
Just used half an onion in your cooking? Or are you always misplacing lids for your containers? These stretchy silicone lids are really a thing of genius for keeping all kinds of food fresh and covered in the fridge. They're great for watermelon in the summer too.
Getting into the swing of leftovers this festive season will make the new year ahead much more enjoyable once it comes. Will you be trying out any of these leftover-friendly buys?
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