Hello.

This is Iwande Comalefe from New York Times cooking.

And I'm sitting on a blanket with.

Melissa Clark, and we're having a picnic using recipes that feature some of our favorite summer produce. Yawande, what'd you bring? So this is a cucumber agua Fresca. It's made with fresh cucumbers, ginger and lime. It's really easy to put together, and.

It'S something that you can do in advance.

Oh, it is so refreshing.

New York Times cooking has so many easy recipes to fit your summer plans. Find them all@nytcooking.com. dot from the New York Times. You're listening to the Wirecutter show.

Hey, everyone, it's the Wirecutter show. I'm Kyra Blackwell.

I'm Christine Cyrclassette.

And I'm Rosie Guerin. And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from the New York Times.

Each week we bring you expert advice from our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better. This episode of the Wirecutter show is called creative Ways to waste less food.

Christine, Kyra, I want to talk this week about food waste.

Ooh, that's a very good topic.

You know, I have two toddlers. You both know that. Which means, you know, a diet of soggy toast and cold scrambled eggs.

Yum.

I know. Jelly.

Delicious.

No, but what it actually means, I mean, among many other things, is that we waste food.

Yeah. Those little toddlers, they're terrible about eating everything on their plates. I've noticed this.

I did not anticipate this part of parenting. And honestly, I want to curb it. I want to get better.

Yeah. I had the same issue when my kids were little. I felt like a garbage disposal. Like I would just eat everything on their plate or throw it out.

That, like, can't be the technique.

No, it can't. There has to be a better.

We have to do better.

This is a big issue for the environment and for people's budgets. We have a piece on the site about how to reduce food waste. And in that piece, we cite a couple of interesting statistics. One third of food in the United States goes to waste, according to the EPA. That's not just what's coming from your refrigerator. It's like the whole food system, but it's just, it's so much food. Right? And the USDA says that the average family of four in the United States will lose about $1,500 a year in food waste.

That's a lot of money.

That's much money. That's like two plus flights to Paris for me and my husband and maybe one half of my child. Like something.

That's how you're mathing these days. One plus equals two flights to Paris.

I mean, like, I don't want to throw away $1,500 a year or more. You know, it's really wild. Kyra, do you meal plan?

No, unfortunately, I'm one of those people who just goes to the grocery store once every other day, and I just pick stuff up and I cook half of it and the other half goes in the trash. So I want to get better. And that's why I love this topic, because we actually have the perfect person to talk to about it. Marilyn Ong. Marilyn is an editor from Wirecutter's kitchen team, and she's going to share all of her best in practice tips and tricks on how to grocery shop in a way that'll help waste less food and optimize your pantry, your freezer, and your fridge, and all the best advice on gear to help your food last longer. Plus, you know, if composting is up your alley, she has a couple of tips on that, too.

Oh, I am so, so psyched. It's the perfect pairing with Genevieve Ko. And Genevieve, of course, is the deputy editor of New York Times Cooking. She's going to join us a little later on in the show, actually, to talk about leftovers and some stuff that you can do to mitigate food waste that way.

For now, we're actually going to take a quick break, and then when we're back, Marilyn will be on with us from the kitchen team.

See you in a sec.

Welcome back to the Wirecutter show. Marilyn Ong is here. Marilyn is an editor on our kitchen team. She edits many of the kitchen guides, and she also regularly cooks for a family of five. So she has a lot of experience meal planning and figuring out how to just, like, optimize her kitchen in a great and smart way.

Hi, Marilyn. Welcome to the Wirecutter show.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

We're so happy to have you. Marilyn, I gotta ask. I'm an aspirational shopper. Oh, no, I know.

Me too.

So what's your advice for shopping and keeping fresh food?

I gotta say, I mean, if there's nothing else people take away from this episode, it's let yourself not be an aspirational cook.

No.

You know, there's so many things on the Internet telling us how to cook. Just be real with yourself. Think about what you are actually going to cook in a given week. And, you know, I know, like, meal prep and all of that is a big thing, but, like, I'm not a big meal prepper. I can't. I can't bring myself to spend half my Sunday chopping all my vegetables for the week. So, like, I even scheduling out how many times you actually have time to cook that week and just buy enough ingredients for those meals is something I've found helps so much. So maybe don't look at Instagram for.

Good note.

So another thing you can think about is, on the days that you don't have as much time to cook, pick up a few things that, you know, you can throw together quickly. In my family, that's like cucumbers, tofu that you can slice up and put over rice freezer stuff, and pantry stuff, like, stuff that doesn't have that ticking clock of things that are just gonna go bad in your fridge. That really helps set yourself up for some quick meals, too. Honestly, I love buying stuff from the frozen section. Like, that helps meal prep a lot.

You know, I actually do that, too. But I think there's a lot of people who kind of give frozen food a bad rap. Like, they just think it's not very good. What do you like to buy frozen? What do you keep on hand?

So, I mean, first of all, let's talk about this, right? Like, frozen food is great. It is oftentimes produce that's, like, harvested and frozen at the peak of its freshness within season, right? So, like, berries during the winter. Frozen is great. I love frozen vegetables. Peas, corn. I love buying frozen dumplings. I mean, that's, like, my, like, meal salvation, right? There is all sorts of frozen dumplings, and there's so many good ones out there, and they have everything in them. Meat, protein, you know, veggies, carbs, like, all in one little pocket. Those are the best.

I think a big issue about food waste is that you don't actually know what's in your fridge or your freezer, and then it just kind of goes bad. So I was kind of wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how you organize your pantry, your fridge to basically mitigate the food waste and make sure you're using everything before it dies.

Sure. Yeah. So, you know, with the fridge, storing yourself smartly is a great way to not waste as much food. So one of the principles that we use a lot in the test kitchen is first in, first out. So if you're coming back from the store, you want to kind of you know, move your old gallon of milk that you're still finishing up, up to the front and put your new one in the back. Same thing. You do that with eggs. We also encourage a lot of labeling. Labeling whatever you're putting into the fridge, especially leftovers. You know, there's like, that mystery Tupperware in the back. You want to know what that is and when you put it in there and move those to the front when you're coming back with new stuff or putting new leftovers into the fridge so that you're grabbing the stuff that you need to use up first. We have a great guide on this on our site, actually. And Marguerite, our kitchen editor who wrote that guide, has worked in kitchens. So she's picked up a lot of the tips from the kitchen she's worked in. One really fun tip that she has is, you know, the condiments that can stay in your fridge forever and do stay in your fridge forever.

She puts them on a lazy susan, and they can spin around and you can grab what you need. It's a great way to keep track of stuff rather than, like, jamden them into your fridge door and never knowing how many bottles of ketchup you have on there.

Genius.

It's almost like you have been inside my fridge or my fridge. What about storage? What about food storage? What do you recommend? I'm thinking about in the fridge and in the pantry specifically.

Yeah. And, you know, we have two guides for this, too, on our site, and one of them is food storage. Containers for leftovers, things you're gonna put in the fridge, things that you might want to microwave, and we've got, like, a mix of glass and plastic stuff. And then in the pantry, what we recommend, recommend is we have a whole separate guide for dry food storage, because your needs are going to be a little different. Right. Like, for the dry food storage, the wirecutter pick is the rubbermaid brilliance food storage containers. They come in all sorts of different sizes. They seal airtight. They're really light and durable.

How'd you test them?

Okay, so we've done all sorts of tests with these things. You know, put flour and your typical dry goods in them and left them for extended periods of time. And one of our testers actually was like, I want to see how many bugs get into these. And so she chose a few containers and put them outside with food in them and capped them and kept track of how many bugs showed up each day.

Wow.

Yeah. It was fewer bugs than we expected. I think they were.

That's good.

It is good. It is good. Yes. It is good. Yes. And it was tested, like, in Texas, where there's bugs, you know?

So when you talk about the rubbermaid containers, you're talking about those clear ones that I feel like I've actually seen on the bear that show about the chef, and they always have. Like, the pantry is stacked with these clear containers and their fridge and their pantry.

Yes. On the bear, those are probably cambros, which are these big. And we actually recommend a rubbermaid version of those. There's, like, smaller, cuter little ones for your cabinet and pantry, but the giant rubbermaid ones that we also recommend are kind of more heavy duty industrial. And, yes, like, see through stuff is great. In your fridge, in your pantry, in your freezer. Anything that gives you a line of sight to that food that's begging to be eaten is good. And so, yeah, often a lot of our picks, all of our picks, actually, right now are see through.

So we've talked about the pantry. We've talked about the fridge. What are some of the strategies that you and our kitchen team use for kind of preserving food in the freezer? Because that can be a really great tool for, you know, reducing the things you're throwing out.

Right. Yes. It's so funny. If you ever talk to our kitchen team, we will all start talking about how full our freezers are. Like, we love using our freezers. So one trick I really like to use is using sheet pans for freezing things. Let's say I made dumplings at home, right? Like, putting them all lined up on a sheet pan in the freezer before I then take them all and put them in a bag so they're frozen first. This is, like, definitely an industrial trick. It's how your berries don't come in the bag in one giant clump. It's because they've been frozen separately and then put together after they've frozen. And that's what makes you able to just grab a handful at any given time. Another thing I love to do is, let's say you bring home a pork shoulder, right? And you don't want to use all eight pounds of it at once. I'll cut them into, like, three pound chunks and store them in the freezer that way so that you can just grab one and be ready to make a meal with it and not feed an army.

I have this thing where I make, like, I'll make a batch of beans or some chicken stock, and in the past, I've stored them in ziploc bags in the freezer. But I'm actually really trying to reduce plastic use in my kitchen. So do you have any tips on what to do if you don't want to use plastic in your freezer?

Yeah, that's such a great question. So, I mean, plastic is really handy. So in our guide for vacuum sealing. Right, like, you kind of can't get away from some of the plastic if you want to vacuum seal stuff because that's what sucks all the air out. And it really, like, it's magical. It can preserve your stuff for a really long time.

Talk about the vacuum sealer for people who don't know.

Okay, so a vacuum sealer is an appliance where you can use, like, either pre made plastic bags or sheets of plastic and you stick stuff in them and it'll suck out all the air and then seal the bag for you. I mean, we've been testing these things for years now. We have had, you know, pork chops and steaks that our tester put in the vacuum sealer since 2019 and was keeping in our freezer in the test kitchen just to see how it was doing over many years.

Is it still there?

Well, sadly, our freezer got shut down one day and we had to get rid of it. But, I mean, and I wouldn't recommend eating meat from 2019. It probably won't taste very good, but it would still be, it still holds up.

You want, like, a little pre pandemic experience.

Harken back to a simpler time.

Taste of the old world. What's the vacuum sealer pick, by the way?

The main pick right now is an anova.

And you can pretty much just seal, like, small little bits of stuff. Right? Like, if you're. Can you just, you have some leftover, like, roast or, you know, roasted vegetables or whatever, you can just vacuum seal it.

Totally. I mean, you can vacuum seal uncooked ingredients and cooked ingredients. There are people who vacuum seal, like, individual servings of ground coffee. Like, that's one way, you know, if you want to have high level coffee making. Yeah, that's intense.

And the vacuum seal really just keeps the food from getting, like, frost bitten as opposed to a ziploc bag.

Yeah, well, so ziploc bags do an okay job, too. But getting all that air out is really the magic. That's what protects your food. Well, but going back to your question about reducing plastic use for liquids, stalks, oatmeal, things like that, I love saving, like, you know, jar of spaghetti sauce, I will save that jar just about anything. Kimchi jars, I'll save them. And then I'll reuse them for exactly things like that. Like a braised liquid that I don't want to throw away.

And how do you keep those from cracking in the freezer? Cause I did that even with a mason jar with some stock, and it cracked and it blew up.

Yeah. So, I mean, liquid expansion in the freezer. So you have to kind of fill it maybe an inch or so from the top. If you want to be safe, leave more room, but give it a little space so that when it expands, it doesn't crack the jar.

I want to very quickly talk about composting, because that could be its own episode.

Sure.

But for now, because some food waste is inevitable, and composting is something you can do to mitigate your waste.

Sure.

We just wanted to get your thoughts on it. Like, how do you compost at home?

Yeah, we've tested a few, like, countertop compost bins. A lot of our staff have used, like, outdoor compost bins. I use a giant black bin that we just throw all our scraps into. And it's definitely a topic that we've been exploring for a long time. So we do have some wrecks for, like, countertop things. And honestly, in our guide to countertop bins, what our writer found was that, like, a big mixing bowl is really the best thing. Yeah.

Since she wrote that piece, I've been just using, like, a metal bowl for my. And it's super easy. It's like, it's so easy to throw stuff in there.

Do you put a lid on it?

Yeah, I have my all clad lid.

That I use on it because I'm super bougie.

Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is, like, if you've got your scraps out like that and then you're tossing them, I don't think it smells that much. And, you know, there's been this really popular trend of these electric composters lately, right. That, like, you'll see them on instagram, you'll see them all over where it. It tells you that it kind of breaks down the waste for you. You kind of put it in and it magically does its thing overnight. When food breaks down this whole organic process, there's chemistry going on in there, and it's actually becoming a really nutrient rich kind of soil or dirt. And with these dehydrating machines, that's really what they're doing, is they're dehydrating it down into what kind of looks like dirt, but it hasn't gone through that organic process, and so it doesn't quite work in your garden in the exact same way. Mill, which is one of the really popular ones that you'll see right now. They actually have a program where you return the scraps, and it's like a chicken feed program. So they will feed that stuff back.

To animals, which is how you know it's not compost.

Yeah, maybe that's a good sign.

Marilyn, thank you so much. Thanks for all your insight.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for coming in the studio.

Thank you.

Okay, so some of the biggest takeaways from talking with Marilyn are try to be conscious when you're shopping.

Right.

Don't buy more than you're gonna use. Have a plan when you go into the grocery store. Be honest with yourself, essentially about what you're going to do.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Rosie? I'm trying to get you to stop buying garlic scapes in the spring and leaving them in there until the fall. I'm gonna harsh my vibe also, just sort of beg, borrow and steal tips from restaurants because they do it well in restaurants, right? They don't waste a lot of food. Or hopefully they don't. So labeling your food, making zones in your fridge, first in, first out, these are all great ways to keep from wasting food. Don't shy away from using the freezer and also using a vacuum sealer for things in your freezer, if you want to buy one of those. And organizing your food in your pantry, in your fridge in clear containers, whether.

They'Re plastic or glass, don't forget that lazy Susan. Also, for all your condiments that'll stay.

There forever, you can just flip it with a finger.

It's so easy.

And then, of course, there's always the topic of leftovers. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a sec with Genevieve Koh, the deputy editor of New York Times cooking. You're listening to the Wirecutter show, and we'll be right back.

Welcome back to the Wirecutter show. Today's episode is all about mitigating food waste. We talked with Marilyn Ong at the top about her advice for storing food, organizing your fridge and pantry, and using your freezer efficiently. Now we're going to dig into what you can actually do with your leftovers, how to think about grocery shopping, what to do with leftovers you might have in the fridge. And we want to share a couple of actual recipes that you can put in your back pocket on those nights when you're just kind of like, what do I make? I have a couple eggs. I have some wilted veggies.

I don't know what to do for this conversation. We thought who better to invite than Genevieve Koh? Genevieve is the deputy editor of New York Times Cooking and the author of Better Baking. She's worked with some of the most famous chefs in the world, has collaborated on over 20 cookbooks, and worked at the LA Times Gourmet magazine, Rest in power, and Martha Stewart, among others. Genevieve is an LA native and current New Yorker, and we're so pumped to have her with us today.

Hi, Genevieve. Welcome to the Wirecutter show.

Hey, Christine. Thanks so much for having me.

You have worked with some of the most amazing, world renowned chefs. You've written cookbooks with Jean Georges, with Mark Bittman, Carla hall. How did you come to sort of be focused on this area of cooking, like, cooking at home?

I think it's interesting that I actually started, I would say, really thinking about home cooks. And I think the thing I loved about my time in restaurants is feeding people is this direct act of, like, here's this wonderful meal to give you a lot of joy. And I really feel the same way, too, about home cooking. That here's this wonderful recipe, and I'm sorry I can't actually cook it for you. I'd love to. Sorry I can't just come to your house and make you this meal. But trying to create something in the form of a recipe for somebody else to have that experience of feeding another, I just think there's so much joy in feeding people, including yourself. So, yeah, that's always been. That's always been a goal of mine, is to just help people enjoy food at home.

So, Genevieve, I actually just learned that a lot of the recipe developers for New York Times cooking create recipes at home rather than in a test kitchen. How does that change the way that you guys write and test recipes?

So test kitchens are amazing, partly because you have people there to help, help do the shopping, do the dishes. You don't think twice about pulling out another saucepan, like, well, let's do the sauce in this other pan, because you're not necessarily the one washing it. Whereas our developers and testers have to do that at home. And maybe they have little kids running around. You know, there's this extra layer of, like, okay, this is actually how it's gonna be cooked. And I really love that reassurance.

And you also, you have the dishes in the sink at the end of it, like, people eat. But then at the end of the day, you must have copious amounts of leftovers.

So many leftovers. We all have so many leftovers.

So what do you do personally? How have you found ways to rework the recipes that you have just sitting in your fridge?

I mean, there are two categories of leftovers that you end up with. One is ingredients. Raw ingredients. Right? You end up having, like, bits of ingredients. And we try really hard to develop all of our recipes to use up whole packages of things, because we know how annoying it is to have random odds and ends. But every once in a while, right, you just still have that, and then you have, like, full on dishes that are left over. And there's nothing I hate more than wasting food. So when I'm dealing with leftovers, I'm often looking at both those categories of things, right? So I'm looking at, like, okay, what are the odds and ends of ingredients I have, and what are the full dishes I have cooked that are completely composed? And what I tend to think is, okay, unless I'm super happy to just eat that same dish as is, what else can I do with it? And I then look to. I look to all those odds and ends of ingredients and put those things together. I had, earlier this week, I had half an onion leftover from testing, and then I had some sour cream left over from making a cake, right.

And I was like, okay, what am I gonna do with these things? I wanna use them up before the sour cream starts to get the little green fuzziness. And, you know, for the onion gets.

That, like, dry or the slime?

The slimy.

The slime. So I made it into an onion dip. So I brought it here so you can.

Ooh, that's so clever.

So just, like, cooked up the onion.

I'm so excited to try this now.

It smells so good.

It smells amazing. And I'm going to have some of these delicious pretzel crisps.

Oh, here's the.

Can I try your attention to the pretzel?

Let me describe the colors.

Okay. This is this golden. It's kind of like a beige ish, golden beautifulness that you would never achieve with lipton. I love a Lipton.

What?

I do love it.

I love it.

Okay, so I'm giving myself, like, a nice, big dollar up.

Asmr.

That was a nice crunch.

Oh, my God. That is so good. I am gonna make this. Mmm.

The color of the onions is so jarring when you've never seen it done, like, for real before.

Okay. But here's the truth. The truth is that I really wanted to make the Lipton dip because I was like, I want to use it with the sour cream. And I couldn't find the dip. And I was like, I have this half an onion. I'm just gonna make. So I had this onion dip, and I'm like, okay. I was also doing this recipe that I have. It's, you know, I have this salmon with corn and bacon and some pasta. And as you can see here, like, this is literally two bites.

Yeah.

But I didn't want to throw it out. And so, you know, I'm looking at that, I'm like, well, what should I do with it now? There's no more pasta left. It's just some of the proteins. So what I would do, I just set it out with pretzel crisps or crackers or any sort of thing. So you can just make yourself little bites, a little dip, top it with a little of the salmon or the bacon. So it's just thinking creatively about, like, okay, what can I do? How can I do this? And the way I usually do it at home is I pull out all of the leftovers, I lay them out on the counter, and I look at them, and I really just think about flavors, textures, and the order in which things need to go. So I, like, lay them out in order of, like, oldest to most recent. I'm like, okay, I gotta prioritize getting rid of these things.

I love that. And I love that you're using the salmon that way. I end up with a lot of salmon, and I usually have, like, a filet left over, and so I think that's such a great use of salmon.

It's like a low key canape.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it's like. I think part of it is just, like, seeing how much fun leftovers can be in that way. Being really open minded about what this leftover can become, I like that there.

Isn'T that pressure that you have to make a whole other meal out of it. It could just be something that you snack on.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

So what is it actually in the dip?

It's true.

Taking notes.

It's truly. Yeah, it's truly onion that's fried in just, like, a neutral flavored oil. I think I just use canola oil, and I sprinkle it with salt and just a touch of sugar to help it caramelize. And I just fry it until it's, like, nice and brown and crispy. You just mix it with sour cream.

Sour cream is basically the answer. Bacon and sour cream, right. Just to make everything taste good.

Yeah. Okay, so then now, like, I have all this dip. Like, if I don't want to just eat chips and dip and create little canapes with my leftover salmon. You can use this onion dip. You can spread it onto chicken breasts and then coat those chicken breasts and breadcrumbs. I think that's an ally slagel recipe. You can actually mix it with freshly cooked pasta. It becomes a creamy mix. You can, like, stir a dollop into scrambled eggs, like, towards the end of cooking. So, yeah, you can just spread it on bread. Like, if you're making yourself, like, a turkey or roast beef sandwich.

I'm wondering, you know, on a kind of a weekly basis, when you're looking in your fridge, like, you get home after a long day, maybe your kids are home with you or, you know, and you're tired, and you're kind of like, okay, what am I gonna make? Do you have any go to kind of, like, recipes or kind of, like, formulas that you use to give new life to leftovers in your fridge?

Yeah, absolutely. Especially in the summer. One thing I do a lot is lettuce wraps. People forget how great iceberg can be. Oh, I know, but it works. I mean, iceberg or any crispy lettuce, green leaf, red leaf. You know, oftentimes what you can do is take any random, especially, like, leftover vegetables or proteins you have, chop them all up, mix them up with a bit of sauce or whatever kind you prefer, and then them in lettuce wraps. In colder months, tortillas can fill that same role, and that can be really fun. So in northern China and in Taiwan as well, there's a dish called. Well, there are a few different dishes. Right? In Beijing, it's called jianbing, and then it's basically usually a homemade sort of savory wheat floured crepe. So I grew up in southern California in a very large chinese american community, and a lot of the moms started buying these tortillas to use instead of the homemade crepes. Cause one who has the time to make them, and I grew up next to East La, where there's a very large mexican american population as well. And so a lot of the moms just started making this with flour tortillas.

And then you beat some eggs, heat them up in the pan. You set the tortilla on the eggs as they're cooking, so it sticks to the tortilla.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that is a real go to for me personally. Like, especially after a long day, just me or the kids love it. This original Beijing version has tons of delicious stuff thrown in there. Sesame seeds, sometimes crispy fried shallots. Definitely different types of sauces. But the straight up just egg and tortilla is really great.

Oh, my gosh. This sounds like my kid's dream. Would you use possibly leftover roasted vegetables or whatever you have in your fridge?

Anything you want in there. So you're right. You pour this beaten egg into the pan. It's sort of halfway set. You set the tortilla on top. You flip the whole thing over so that the tortilla continues to warm while the egg sets onto it. After that, you can put anything you want on top. It's similar to a quesadilla in spirit, right. You can just put anything you want.

I have an issue where I always seem to have loose celery just hanging around in my fridge, and I don't know what to do with it. I always end up throwing it away.

Oh, no. What do you do with those?

Oh, that makes me serious. What do you do with it? Because you can't put celery in, like, most things.

Okay. This is. Well, my first answer to that is, oh, you absolutely can love celery. I love celery. Perfect. It's really savory. It's really crunchy. One of my go to things for leftover, I shouldn't call them leftover, but just, like, old. Or maybe they are left over for making a salad like celery. Any sort of lettuces. You can always cook your vegetables. People never think of, like, a head of romaine lettuce, right. You know, it gets that sad and wilty, and if it won't even revive in ice water. But it's not bad yet. Like, you know, it's still safe and good to eat. You can 100% cook it. You can stir fry it. You can.

And it get slimy. Like, I find I've done that a couple times, and I've found that, like, sometimes I might be doing it wrong, but I found that the, like, the leaves get a little too limp or something. I don't know.

Yeah, that's. I would just pull it off the heat earlier.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's just, like, a quick flash in the pan, maybe with, like, a lot of garlic or something really strongly flavored, even, like, grated ginger. That will both brighten the flavor. Cause it obviously tastes like nothing.

Right.

Bacon. Bacon always sucks. Just a quick turn pan.

I think some of the intimidation that people experience I talked to friends and family about with cooking or approaching meals is, like, a lack of confidence. In terms of going off recipe that people get nervous about, I don't have parsley for the garnish, so I can't make the recipe. I'm curious, from your perspective, what kind of guidance do you give people who are just starting to approach home cooking and want to get more comfortable with sort of improvisation?

Yeah. You know, the irony of that is, you know, I would say, like, of course, just feel free to improvise as you want. But what I've definitely learned over all these years of doing this recipe organ and just watching cooks, you know, part of the reason that we still publish so many recipes that are step one, step two, step three is because the more you follow those and do those, the better sense you get of what goes together, how long to cook something, how to add seasonings, when to add seasonings, different techniques. So once you get comfortable with that, it becomes so much easier. I would say if you want to go off book early on, then you keep it super simple. Then you do things like the tortilla, the egg. You do variations on sandwiches. You do really basic, basic things. Yeah. I will say, though, as a rule, like, garnishes, always optional.

So bonus question, because you are the deputy editor of Times cooking, what ingredient are you really loving cooking with recently?

Oh, my fridge is actually usually pretty empty because I do not like wasting food. I'm always trying to move stuff in and out, and I realized that, oh, man, I still have so much bacon fat in my fridge. Cause I always save my bacon fat.

You freeze it or you put it in the fridge?

I put it in the fridge. Cause I try to use. Cause you use it. I'm a fan of using it.

How long does that last in your fridge?

Until it smells weird.

Okay.

It's not a safe test.

It's a universal rule.

Or looks weird. I think it smells weird or looks weird. So I've just been, like, a little dollops in the bagged baby spinach. Just a tiny touch of that bacon fat in there with the olive oil. All of a sudden, it is the most delicious spinach in the world.

Well, this is so great. Genevieve. Thank you so much for coming by. Thanks for chatting with us. Thanks for being so gracious and generous with your recipes, and we really appreciate having you.

Awesome.

Just so fun hanging out with you guys.

I feel like these two interviews with Marilyn and genevieve are my ticket to buying tickets somewhere this year, because I'm gonna save $1,500 on my groceries. I swear. I feel like I have. I've unlocked it. I've cracked the code, and I'm going to stop wasting food and save myself some grocery budget. So what did you take away?

I love that that's the shorthand. What are you gonna do with your 1500? Well, I feel like my takeaway from Genevieve was this idea of taking leftover meals, specifically, like, the little picky bits of proteins or veg or whatever you have, finding a little sauce, finding a little dip, putting that on a cracker or pretzel, thin a canopy.

Yeah, great. I mean, that's actually kind of just the way I want to eat all the time, is just something with a cracker and something on it.

So, yeah, it's a grilled dinner. Pop on a fascinator, got a little canape.

I love it.

Ready to.

So fancy.

So I loved all of Marilyn's tips about how to maximize your freezer. I actually bought a little mini chest freezer this year, and it's, like, in a closet in my Brooklyn apartment. But I'm gonna get some smaller sheet pans. I think the quarter size ones will fit in my freezer. And I'm gonna just start using her tips for freezing things on a sheet pan in there.

I love that her little bit about laying it off flat kind of blew my mind. Cause I'm like, why are all my frozen fruits and vegetables always mushy when I do it? But I think my favorite tip from Genevieve was definitely just about like, don't be afraid of your dying vegetables. Like, just throw it in a pan, stir fry it, eat it. It's fine.

Just put some garlic in there.

Yeah.

You got this, Kyra.

You can grab a copy of Genevieve Koh's book, better baking at your local bookshop or wherever you buy books. If you want to check out any of the recipes we talked about today, or Genevieve and her team's other work, head over to cooking dot nytimes.com.

And if you want to find out more about wire cutters coverage on food storage or snag the products we recommended today, go to nytimes.com wirecutter or you can find a link in the show notes. And that's it for us. Till next week.

Bye bye.

The Wirecutter show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Editing by Abigail Kiel, engineering support from Mattie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez, original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Ba Itup, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher and interim general manager is Cliff Levy, Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief, and we would really appreciate it if you take the time to rate the show or leave a review. It helps other people find the show, too. Thanks for listening. So she has a lot of high, hot tips on how to waste less food.

Hot tips, Marilyn, love it. You might need to cut that.