Zero Waste – Recipes for Christmas Leftovers

by | Dec 7, 2020 | Youth Work Ireland Laois

Cheese and potato bread

Uses up cold mashed potato and leftover cheese

Ingredients

225g plain flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp mustard powder
2 tsp baking powder
125g grated cheese
175g cold mashed potato
200ml water
1 tbsp oil

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 220o
  2. Lightly grease a baking tray.
  3. Sieve the flour, salt, mustard powder and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
  4. Reserve 2 tbsp of the grated cheese and stir the rest into the bowl with the mashed potato.
  5. Pour in the water and the oil and stir all the ingredients together (the mixture will be wet at this stage). Mix them all to make a soft dough.
  6. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and shape it into a 20cm round.
  7. Place the round on the baking sheet and mark it into 4 portions with a knife without cutting through. Sprinkle with the reserved cheese.
  8. Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes.
  9. Transfer the bread to a wire rack and leave to cool. Serve the bread as fresh as possible.

Low Waste Veggie Stock

Ingredients

Reserve vegetable scraps from cooking your Christmas dinner (or the weeks ahead!). This includes garlic skins, onion roots and skins and mushroom stalks!
You can also use up any vegetables that are almost gone off, such as onions, carrots, parsnips or celery.
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
A generous pinch each of rosemary, thyme, and dried mixed herbs

Directions

  1. Wash vegetables and scraps thoroughly.
  2. Chop up any whole vegetables.
  3. Finely chop garlic. Fry off the garlic and vegetables in olive oil in a large pot until browned.
  4. Add scraps and herbs. Stir.
  5. Add just enough water to cover everything and simmer for 1-3 hours, before straining. Leave all the vegetables sitting in a colander over a bowl so the stock can drip in.
  6. Season the stock to taste and you’re done!

Bubble and squeak

Uses up left over mashed potato and cold vegetables

Ingredients
Cold mashed potato
A mixture of cold sprouts, carrots and swede
Oil for frying

Method

  1. Put the cold mashed potato and  roughly the same quantity of vegetables into a bowl and mash together using a potato masher or fork.
  2. Heat some oil in a frying pan over a medium heat.
  3. Form the mashed mixture into patties with your hands and place them in the frying pan.
  4. When the underneath is golden brown, turn them over with a fish slice.
  5. Let the underneath go golden brown again.
  6. Keep turning them until they have been in the pan for at least 30 minutes so they get hot inside.
  7. Serve with cold leftover meat and pickles.

 

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Leftover vegetables- you can use any vegetables left over from Christmas, including mashed potatoes. Just don’t use sprouts, they’ll make the soup bitter

115g butter

115 flour
1 onion
700ml vegetable stock
Cream

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a large pot. Once the butter, is hot, add finely chopped onion and fry until it is translucent and soft.
  2. Add the flour and stir well, forming a paste. This called a “roux”- cook for about two minutes so that the flour cooks, stirring the whole time.
  3. Slowly add the stock, stirring all the time to avoid lumps.
  4. Add your vegetables and simmer for around 30 minutes.
  5. Season with herbs, salt and pepper.
  6. Blitz until smooth. Stir in a drop of cream and serve.

Turkey and ham pie
Uses up left-over cold turkey and ham

Ingredients

Cold cooked, left-over turkey and ham, diced (enough to fill a pie dish 20cm diameter by 3cm deep)
For the pastry
230g plain flour
115g butter
2-3 tbsp cold water
1 egg to glaze
For the sauce
150ml boiling water
150ml milk
1 vegetable stock cube
25g plain flour
25g butter

Method

  1. Sieve the flour into a bowl and cut the butter into chunks, add the butter to the flour.
  2. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.
  3. Add cold water a little at a time and mix into the dough using a blunt knife, by making a cutting motion. When it starts to clump together use your hands to form it into a ball of dough.
  4. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly. Cover in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 30 mins.
  5. Pour 150ml boiling water into a jug and add the stock cube. Stir until the stock cube is dissolved. Then add to the milk.
  6. Pour the water and milk mix into a saucepan and add the flour and butter.
  7. Over a medium heat whisk the sauce. It will start to thicken as it boils, keep whisking continuously for 2mins after it starts to bubble.
  8. Add the cold meat to the sauce and put aside.
  9. Preheat the oven to 180o
  10. Take the pastry out of the fridge and divide into 2 portions. Roll 1 portion out on a floured surface and line a greased pie dish.
  11. Put the meat and sauce mixture into the pie dish.
  12. Roll out the other half of the pastry and lay over the meat mixture. Then trim the pastry. Lift the edges of the pastry and wet the edges so it sticks together. Press the edges with your thumb to form a crust.
  13. Make 2 small cuts in the middle of the pie to allow steam to escape while cooking.
  14. Crack an egg into a cup and beat with a fork. Brush with the beaten egg mix to glaze the pie.
  15. Put the pie into the middle of the oven and cook for 40 mins until golden brown. Serve hot or cold.

Note: You can use the excess pastry trimmings to make jam tarts or to decorate the pie before it is cooked.