One Man’s Trash

Fried Sweet Potato Skins

I don’t know if it is due to a newfound sense of scarcity, but I have been reluctant to throw away even the scrappiest scraps. Here are some of the things I’ve been up to.

1. Potato Skins — For fried potato skins, rinse and dry the peels, fry them up, add salt and enjoy.
2. Veggie Scraps — For veggie broth, toss scraps (onion and garlic peels, carrot ends, broccoli stalks, anything really) into a freezer bag. When the bag is full, cook for 2hrs in a pressure cooker.
3. Bones and Meat Scraps — For bone broth, cook the bones, carcasses and gristle in a pressure cooker for 2–3hrs.
4. Fat — Render skins and fatty meaty bits in the oven, pour into jars, and use in place of (or in addition to) butter and ghee.
5. Apple Cores — Just eat them.
6. Sourdough Starter Discard — We make pancakes, crepes, muffins, whatever. There are entire articles on great uses for starter discard. Never toss, always eat.
7. Lemon and Lime Peels — Chop them up, add cheap vodka, wait a couple of weeks, add simple syrup, wait a couple more weeks, enjoy.
8. Glass Jars — We rarely recycle these and somehow are always in need of more. We use them for storing broths, fats and art supplies. I wish the tops were standardized.

Got scrappy advice? I’m all ears.