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.
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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.
I was raised on a parade of chili and soups packed and frozen in poor-man’s tupperware (reused margarine and yogurt containers).
Enchiladas:
Cook up some spicy meat and bean (Pinto or black) mix, with plenty of chile sauce (at least 4 cups sauce, dealer’s choice). lightly oil some corn tortillas and layer them with the spicy meat and beans and sauce + cheddar (or similarly bitter) cheese and white onion in a casserole dish (like a lasagna) bake at 350 (f) for ~until it bubbles at the sides~ Rest 10 minutes on stove top Serve and enjoy. Save left overs for later.
Best if you use NM Chile but any spicy chile really would work, just make a sauce using it however you want. fresh onion and garlic and can get some Mexican oregano to add to the overall seasoning. It’s just a layered corn tortilla casserole with spicy filling and ample cheese at the end of the day so do whatever you want with it.
edit: for any NM expats reading; if you’re making red chile sauce from powder, I have recently discovered adding a bit of honey really elevates the flavor—I assume powder loses a lot of the sugar content in pods and other more freshly made sauces so the honey reintroduces a bit of earthy sweetness.
Nice of you to call it: Cottage Pie.
That’s a big pet peeve of mine.
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.
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.
Lasagna
Chili, as everyone is saying.
Gumbo, and also oxtail stew, I won’t even serve them the first day, they are so much better after a rest in the fridge.
Not cooking but any time we get pizza hut pizza I get a pan pizza to reheat - all that extra fat in the crust crisps up, it is so good reheated and not good the first day.
Any big hunk of meat is good because the first day it can be meat, rice, and beans, then tacos, then nachos or soup/chili or enchiladas.
Also if you don’t like cooking (I do but have competing priorities) a big Tupperware of salad made in the weekend can help throughout the week.
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
Yep pretty much same thing different name.
Curry always tastes better the next day.
Not Japanese curry. It can get kind of grainy.
Chili. Almost any stew, really. They only get better when they sit longer.
I love doing Pulled Pork for lunches and dinner. Great for a meal and then it’s great to put in other dishes. Nachos and quesadillas for lazy days and then great in soup
Dirty rice with andouille sausage, shepherds pie, pizza, tacos (assuming all the parts are refrigerated separately; putting an assembled taco in the fridge doesn’t really make good left overs IMO), soups, fried chicken… Nothing with pasta. Cold pasta is gross and reheating it never comes out good.
Reheated pasta is a thing here in Italy. If I am not mistaken, there are some recipes which started as a way to use pasta leftovers.
Take cold pasta, pour in oven safe container, sprinkle cheese, broil, bang —> gratin!
This is the way
In a way that doesn’t make it just become mush? Cuz, like, I make it al dente and it’s great; but if I save it and reheat it, its like super overcooked and that’s my main problem with leftover pasta. It loses all its chew.
It may depend on the way you reheat it.If you use the microwave then it may become mushy.
You can try the oven like “pasta al forno” or “pasta pasticciata”. These recipes should spawn from the need to consume pasta leftovers.
Or, you can try to reheat using some non sticky pan with oil. Depending on how much oil you use it can become some sort of fried pasta, with some very crunchy bits. It doesn’t come to my mind any recipes based on this way of reheating but I can assure you that every Italian has tried it and someone likes it more than fresh made pasta (including my SO)
Leftover pasta needs to be baked.
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
