29 Foods You Need To Stop Throwing Out

Many people pour pasta water down the drain. Once you learn the value of this often discarded elixir (or "liquid gold"), there's no turning back. Water conservation aside, saving pasta water is a fantastic way to elevate sauces, soups, baked goods, and even drinks.

If it isn't more than a few days old, you can reuse pasta water to cook more pasta, rice, or anything boiled in plain water. Starch released as the pasta cooks causes the cloudy appearance. Together with a mild salty flavor, this thickens pasta sauce and is the secret to restaurant-worthy pasta dishes.

Additionally, you can incorporate pasta water into bread and pizza dough, substitute it for soup stock or use it to soak legumes. You can even use pasta water in cocktails or drink it alone.

Typically, all parts of herbs are edible, and tossing herb stems is a major mistake. The stems of gentle herbs like cilantro or basil add a lovely crunch to salads and spreads. Falafel or tabbouleh rely on herbs, and you can maximize the flavor by using both leaves and stems. Mixed with stale bread, garlic, and crushed nuts, they can be turned into picada, an essential Catalan seasoning. If you keep a bag of unused stalks in the freezer, you can turn them into a chimichurri or pesto.

Unused stems can also flavor other things. Freeze leftover mint bits with water to make cocktail-ready ice cubes, add dill stems to fridge pickles, or use thyme stems for herb-infused vinegar. Tough stems of woodier herbs like rosemary can become skewers for grilling vegetables or be added directly to the grill to infuse food with herby smoke. Finally, leftover herb parts are excellent in homemade broth.

A lot of fruit is wasted both before and after reaching the consumer. Eating fruit skins is one way to combat fruit waste. Many fruits, such as apples, peaches, plums, pears, and grapes, do not need to be peeled. In fact, fruit skins contain fiber and nutrients and often comprise a significant portion of the fruit's total weight.

The peels have lots of culinary potential. You could make apple cider vinegar from apple skins and scraps or oven-baked chips with sugar and cinnamon. Citrus fruit peels are even more versatile. You could include whole rinds to make classic fruit preserves such as marmalade and candied peels or use the zest for citrus-flavored sugar or salt, or freeze it for later use in other dishes.

The alternative name of drupes comes from the hard-shelled pits (stones) hidden at the core of cherries, apricots, peaches, and plums. These seeds are typically discarded and commonly believed to be poisonous. In truth, stone fruit seeds are protected by a cyanide-producing enzyme, but you would need to chew and ingest way more than a few to be affected (via National Capital Poison Center).

There are safe ways to use stone fruit seeds, and some of them are practiced industrially. Almond extract is made with water, alcohol, and almond oil. Technically stone fruits, almonds contain benzaldehyde, a compound regulating the intensity of what we identify as almond flavor. Considering all other stone fruits have it, all can be used to deliver that flavor, which is the strategy almond extract manufacturers employ. You can make your own almond extract or use whole peach pits to infuse vinegar with the subtle almond flavor. Alternatively, compost or plant pits.

Watermelon can be eaten whole, even though it might not be evident to those who are used to discarding the rinds. However, they are totally safe to eat and have nutritional value. According to Healthline, watermelon rind is rich in vitamins A and C, as well as fiber.

Eating raw watermelon rind might be challenging for your teeth and stomach. Still, there are ways to get all that extra nutritional value while wasting less food. After you remove the green waxy skin, the white rind can be used in a variety of ways; pickled watermelon rind is especially popular in the South. You could also add it to smoothies, make rind candy or use it in curries and stir-fries.

If you store open wine for too long, it might go past the point of being enjoyable. Exposure to oxygen, light, heat, bacteria, and yeast affects the quality of wine. According to Wine Folly, light varieties shouldn't be stored for more than one to five days, and darker varieties no more than three to seven days. While unlikely to poison you, the experience will be subpar. There are ways to incorporate that wine into cooking. For example, you could use it in recipes that call for cooking wine or freeze the wine in an ice cube tray for later.

If your open bottle of wine turns rancid, turn it into wine vinegar. The process is fairly simple: mix the wine with unpasteurized vinegar, cover it with cheesecloth, and wait. You can start tasting it after a week and use it as soon as you're happy with the flavor.

With a pickle craze sweeping the nation, there's no need to pour the humble pickle brine down the drain. The Food Institute attributes the surge in pickle popularity to reimagining flavor pairings and presentation. Theoretically, that could also help people see pickle juice as an ingredient with great potential.

Still considered a hangover remedy by some, pickle juice is a key to the pickleback shot. The Wall Street Journal compares the experience of chasing a shot of whiskey with pickle juice to drinking a Big Mac, and there are other pickle juice cocktails to enjoy.

Pickle juice could also replace vinegar, enhance flavors in tart soups, and marinate or tenderize proteins. The most wondrous thing is that a jar of reserved pickle juice can be used to make more pickles: just add chopped vegetables and leave the mix in the fridge overnight.

Mushrooms are an affordable, versatile ingredient packed with umami. While some, like cremini, are tender and can be consumed whole, others, such as shiitake or trumpet, have tougher, chewier stems that are usually chopped off. Removing the stems makes sense, but they can be used in multiple ways.

Shiitake mushroom stems, for instance, can be cooked longer and come in handy for a rich broth. Mushroom enthusiasts infuse alcohol with them or grind their dehydrated fungi leftovers into powder, which can add an umami boost to any dish.

While you can't stuff mushroom caps without removing the stems, you can incorporate them into the stuffing. Other mushroom parts should also be saved: if a vegan scallop recipe calls only for king oyster mushrooms' meaty stems, use the trimmings in a broth, stir-fry, or soup.

Most parts of common vegetables are edible. If you're trying to minimize food waste by opting for ugly produce or composting, you might be ready to use veggie scraps and peels for cooking.

To get the most out of veggie scraps, save them in a freezer-friendly container for veggie stock or chop them to make a zero-waste stir-fry. Slightly more laborious, the peels of certain veggies can be made into chips, and potato skins can become a crunchy topping for mashed potatoes.

The power of fermentation could also turn those scraps into treasure. A plant-based version of garum, an ancient Roman fish sauce prized for its umami flavor, was dubbed "compost sauce" by The Guardian. While it's the most time-consuming option, the result is worth it.

The peak season for root vegetables is the perfect time to incorporate them into your cooking. Of course, you can chop off the greens, remove the tops, peel the skins, and work only with the flesh of the root. But why waste so much? You can regrow the greens from the sliced tops, and the process couldn't be more straightforward: place the top inch of a carrot, radish, beet, or turnip in a shallow bowl of water (changing it frequently), cut side down, and wait. Empress of Dirt warns that you can only expect leaves, not roots, to regrow.

There's a wide range of dishes to incorporate your regrown greens, such as sautéed beet greens. Carrot greens have an earthy, parsley-like flavor and make a fitting addition to salads or pesto, while radish greens make an excellent arugula substitute.

Making juice or plant milk produces leftover pulp. You can use it as popsicles and flavored ice cubes or add it to smoothies. Fruit pulp is helpful in baking, and vegetable pulp in savory dishes, such as veggie burgers or soups. Carrot pulp is uniquely versatile, as it shines in sweet baked goods such as carrot cake, savory options like tomato sauce, or a budget-friendly cheese replacer. You can also mix the pulp with peanut butter and oats for a healthy dog treat — make sure your pup isn't allergic to anything you're juicing.

Almond milk lovers can turn the leftover pulp into otherwise expensive flour, a delectable spread, or a base for raw vegan crusts. Oat milk pulp can complement almost any breakfast dish and even be added to hummus. Soybean pulp, known as okara, can make patties and porridge or be added to smoothies and scrambles.

If you can't imagine life without that satisfying crunch, you can make fried foods more sustainable. First, pick the best oil for frying with a high smoking point, take safety measures to prevent rookie mistakes, then start cooking. Once you're done, don't send the oil down the drain. It will wreak havoc on your plumbing. Instead, reuse the oil, but do it properly: let the oil cool completely, strain it through a cheesecloth, then transfer it to a clean container. It's best to keep it in a cool, dry place.

The rule of thumb when reusing oil is to try to match the foods you've fried. When frying plant foods, you can reuse that oil at least eight times (as opposed to four times with fried chicken). If it looks or smells off, stop using it and contact your local oil recycling service.

Apples are America's favorite fruit. The U.S. is a major global apple producer, second only to China (via Agricultural Marketing Resource Center). Unfortunately, lots of cores end up composted or discarded when they could've been saved.

While you can eat the core, that might not be the answer for everyone. Luckily, there are plenty of culinary ways you can repurpose them. For instance, try apple scrap recipes for applesauce, jelly, or jam. You could also brew cores with cinnamon for tea, infuse the juice into vinegar or liquors, or use them along with apple peels for a breakfast-worthy syrup or homemade pectin. Be sure to remove the seeds from your apple scraps, as large quantities can be poisonous.

Whether you're delighted or disappointed with an avocado's ripeness, you'll always be left with a large hard pit. You don't have to throw it away, though repurposing the avocado pit is as high-maintenance as the fruit itself.

Technically, the pits are edible and contain fiber and antioxidants. You could even dehydrate them and grind them into a bitter powder for drinks and soups (via Healthline). But avocado pits are mildly toxic, containing a plant toxin called persin and a host of antinutrients such as tannins, oxalates, and saponins. While it's unlikely you'll eat enough to get food poisoning, it's still best to reserve them for other uses.

One theory says that the pits can prevent guacamole from browning or spoiling. However, planting an avocado seed is probably the best way to repurpose it. It's a fun home gardening project, though you shouldn't get your hopes too high, as it's a slow and unreliable process (via Empress of Dirt).

If your drink of choice is tea, you might already reuse your tea bags or loose-leaf tea. It's common to steep tea multiple times as long as you're satisfied with the flavor. The ground rules for resteeping tea are to store it correctly and reuse it quickly to avoid bacteria and mold.

While the best way to lower food waste would be to opt for loose-leaf tea sold in the least amount of packaging, tea bags are convenient. Rarely biodegradable, it's best to get as much use out of tea bags as possible. One option is to add the bags to a recipe's hot liquid, imparting a tea flavor and fragrance into baking, oatmeal, rice pudding, or even plain grains. You can also reuse them to infuse milk or alcohol.