Seattle-based chef, Joel Gamoran, has quite literally written the book on food scraps.
His goal is to reduce food waste and stretch the weekly budget by teaching us how to turn the food we’d normally throw in the bin — from onion skins to carrots tops — into delicious dishes. He calls it “cooking scrappy”.

For Gamoran, who has made three series of US television cooking show, Scraps, the eureka moment came while teaching home cooks in New York.

“In one class, I noticed everyone’s garbage bowl filled to the brim with usable ingredients — cucumber peels, carrot tops, onion skins. I would totally get yelled at for throwing this stuff out in restaurants. It felt like a huge disconnect. That was the moment where I thought, how do we get home cooks to care about this? So I asked myself, what could I do with that naked corn cob? How do I make chicken bones sexy? That has become my calling.”

The grandson of a rabbi, Gamoran’s ethos is also inspired by his Jewish upbringing. “Whether it’s in the Torah or traditional Jewish cooking, it’s all about being super-thoughtful about not wasting things. I grew up always saving scraps and things like shmaltz. It was something that was ingrained in me by my grandma — we would toss it in potatoes, fry eggs with it. For us it was like gold. The tradition of roasting a chicken on Shabbat and then really stretching it throughout the weekend makes a lot of sense to me and it’s something that I saw a lot growing up.”

veg scraps GettyImages-136258139 (2)

Photo: Getty Images

By his definition the art of being scrappy is using what you just happen to have to hand and making something beautiful out of it. Take his bachelor party. He and a few friends had rented a house on a lake in upstate New York.

“It was the last day and there was no food, just odds and ends left over. And no grocery stores within 60 miles.” Undaunted, he started thinking outside the box, or in this case, the bag. He found some leftover crisps that were the worse for wear and whipped up a bowl of chilaquiles, a Mexican breakfast dish traditionally made with tortilla chips (think nachos meets shakshuka). Other scraps from the fridge were transformed into frittatas. “It was a pretty epic feast.”

Leftover crisps (or chips as they’re called in the US) went on to star in other recipes like his signature stale potato chip chocolate chip cookies (see recipe opposite).

Gamoran’s the first to point out he didn’t invent the idea of zero waste cooking. That said, its current rebooting is less about parsimony than concerns about sustainability and the ethics of waste in a world in which millions don’t have enough to eat, even in so-called “affluent” countries, including Britain.

Since about 40 percent of our grocery bill ends up in the bin — with America and the UK as the world’s top culprits — “Wasting just seems normal for us,” he observes. “Our grandparents, on the other hand, saved everything. And if you had to wait a week before your chicken guy came back and you wanted the flavour of chicken after you ate it at Shabbat, you had to make your own stock from the bones and scraps. Now, you can literally go just grab another chicken from the store.”

He argues that attitudes need to change across the board. Take expiry dates: “I guarantee if you have a carton of milk in the fridge and smell it two weeks after the expiry date, it smells totally fine. So why does it say that on the carton? It’s because the milk companies want you to come back and buy more. It’s crazy.”

Other cultures, he says, don’t have dates on things like eggs, and milk, and things like that. “They just use it, and they know when it’s up, and when it’s up, there’s a use for it. They’re not scared of things the way we are. You have some yogurt that’s expired? You make more yogurt out of it. Or cream that’s turned? They make crème fraiche. They haven’t lost that skill the way we have, and they’re not scared of food the way we are.”

For many home cooks, however enthusiastic about the idea, adapting to a zero-waste approach can be challenging. Few of us have role models. The generations past that transferred food savings skills from one generation to another have all but disappeared. And unlike Gamoran, most of us have never worked in a professional kitchen under the watchful eye of an executive chef whose other eye is focused on the week’s food cost.

Capture

Cooking Scrappy is a return to our grandmothers' kitchen habits

To make matters worse, most recipes don’t include suggestions for using up leftovers and trimmings or including scraps that happen to be languishing in the freezer or fridge.

There’s also something of an ideological threshold to cross — to really believe that every scrap of food in the kitchen should be used if possible (and of course, safe).

But Gamoran points out, “Once you get started, you’ll come to see every scrap as an opportunity.” And once you do cross that threshold, cooking more sustainably can be creative and fun. What’s more, you’ll be helping both save the planet and your weekly food budget.

As Grandma used to say, “Waste not, want not.”

joelgamoran.com