Have fun with your leftovers. Try different combinations and add different spices and see what you can come up with. There are two things to remember when trying out new recipes with your leftovers. Pay attention to the ingredients and not the taste while also, paying attention to the taste and not the ingredients. Confusing? Not really, let’s explain.
Ingredients, not taste
Let’s take the hamburger meat as an example. What ingredients did you put into it for the actual hamburger? Salt, pepper and maybe some Italian seasoning were used. Keep these ingredients in mind when repurposing the hamburger because it may not need more salt in the dish you are trying to create. If there was plenty of salt for the hamburger, cut out the salt in the new recipe and see if that works well. What else? Bread crumbs, ketchup and possibly even some A-1. If you went heavy on the A-1 sauce, this might not work well repurposed as a breakfast casserole. A meatloaf on the other hand might just work. Just remember what you put in to determine what kind of dish you want to reuse the meat in.
Taste, not ingredients
For this example, let’s use the holiday breakfast make-over. One can only assume that since mashed potatoes, stuffing and turkey all go together in a meal, that they can all be used together in a single dish. Pretending with your mouth can get you a long way when cooking. If you think it will taste good together, go for it. If not, then you are probably right. Think about how the food will taste together to get a good idea of the expected outcome.
