After Shirley Garrier’s family left Vietnam and settled in France, her grandmother couldn’t find the ingredients to make a classic Vietnamese bánh mì. So she bought French sardines preserved in olive oil, which were cheap but very tasty. It was a revelation. Because sardines are a fatty fish, they balanced out the sourness of the pickled vegetables and the herbaceous cilantro. To this day, Garrier remains proud of the way this sandwich exemplifies her family’s cultural background. When she and her partner in life and business, Mathieu Zouhairi, were writing their cookbook, The Social Food: Home Cooking Inspired by the Flavors of the World, they knew this canned sardine banh mi recipe had to be in it.

Though store-bought bread will work well in this sandwich, nothing beats a fresh homemade baguette. Follow this dồ chua recipe to make the Vietnamese carrot-daikon pickle at home.

This recipe is adapted from The Social Food: Home Cooking Inspired by the Flavors of the World by Shirley Garrier & Mathieu Zouhairi (Rizzoli New York; 2022).

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Mountain yam aficionados love its viscosity when finely grated, but for the uninitiated, fresh julienned pieces are an excellent way to enjoy the crisp texture of the tuber. In this mountain yam recipe with vinegared sesame sauce, the rich dressing balances beautifully with the delicately flavored vegetable.

When cutting mountain yam, place a clean cloth atop the cutting board, so the slippery pieces don’t slide around as you julienne. To counteract the itchy properties of mountain yam, wash your hands and forearms with warm soapy water after handling.

Konbu dashi is easy to make from scratch, and a batch can be used to make a variety of vegetarian Japanese dishes. Look for white sesame paste at your local Japanese market, or online. Different brands of sesame paste have varying consistencies, so you may need to add more konbu dashi to make the sauce pourable.

This recipe is adapted from Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook and was featured in “This 1-Ingredient No-Cook Stock is at the Heart of Japanese Vegetarian Cooking.”

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Serving cold tofu as a light side dish for a summer meal is a popular method for combatting the hot, humid weather in Japan. Here the cucumber vinegar is an especially refreshing and tasty dressing for the tofu, but also could be combined with lightly roasted sesame oil or fruity olive oil as a dressing for summer tomatoes. Konbu dashi is easy to make from scratch, and a batch can be used to make a variety of vegetarian Japanese dishes.

This recipe is adapted from Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook and was featured in “This 1-Ingredient No-Cook Stock is at the Heart of Japanese Vegetarian Cooking.”

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Natto has diehard fans, but some people cannot get past the thick whipped-up threads surrounding the beans. Here, the natto is not aerated, and the spicy wetness of grated daikon helps mitigate the fermented funkiness, rendering the dish much more widely appealing and a tasty, healthy bite to start the day.

Try to source natto made locally rather than in Japan; imported natto is typically frozen for shipping and loses some of its unusual delicacy. (We like the New York-make NYrture brand—look for it in local specialty stores or online.) Konbu dashi is easy to make from scratch, and a batch can be used to make a variety of vegetarian Japanese dishes.

This recipe is adapted from Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook and was featured in “This 1-Ingredient No-Cook Stock is at the Heart of Japanese Vegetarian Cooking.”

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Though day-old coffee might offer a caffeine boost, it tastes pretty bitter and acidic on its own—yet pouring it out feels like a waste. The next time you’ve got a bit of java left over in the pot, use it to make this leftover coffee overnight oats recipe. Depending on the beans’ origins and flavor profile, the morning beverage can bring earthy, floral, or chocolatey notes to an otherwise simple bowl of oatmeal. Top the oatmeal with ingredients like coarsely chopped nuts, seeds, shaved chocolate, berries, and nut butter, and coffee becomes a key player in a symphony of flavor.

When making overnight oats, look for old-fashioned oats, also called rolled oats. Other oat types, like instant or steel-cut, won’t work here. For the milk, you can swap in any plant-based milk, which would also make this recipe vegan. Leftover coffee should be covered and kept in the fridge.

Featured in, “The Latest Thing Brewing in Portland: Unsung Coffee Beans”

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Mesmerized, I watched my grandmother’s hands working the dough as she told me how she survived the Great Depression. How she brewed tea twice. Diluted soap. Saved every bag, tie, and scrap of foil.

These idiosyncrasies of the Silent Generation annoyed my mother, but fascinated me. My grandmother’s lessons in frugality would serve me a few years later when I became homeless.

Frugality does not mean what it did a century ago, a decade ago, or even a year ago if you consider the price of eggs. A word that originally meant the care and enjoyment of the fruits of one’s labor, “frugal” doesn’t have the same definition for everyone. That’s because not everyone has equal access to those fruits.

To understand the role of frugality in American culture, studying the Great Depression is a good starting point. “There’s a great dish called Milkorno,” says baker and author B. Dylan Hollis, who revived an old recipe for the powdered milk and cornmeal gruel for TikTok. Hollis studies history through cookbooks. “In the Great Depression, you had institutes and universities coming up with frugal ways to teach the populace how to stretch their dollar,” Hollis says. Milkorno was one of Cornell’s concoctions. Hollis’ scalding review described the bite as “Depressed polenta! Oatmeal that needs therapy! Unemployed grits.”

But wealthy people weren’t eating depressed polenta during the Great Depression. They were busy serving aspic, those towering, jiggling plates of savory gelatin—in part to show they could afford a refrigerator, as historian Jonathan Rees explains in Refrigeration Nation. A modern analog might be the Vitamix or Instant Pot, appliances that streamline cooking while also being status symbols. As in every era, the more money you have, the more frugal you can afford to be with your time. 

“The trade-off is time for money,” says dietician and author Jessica Wilson, who specializes in anti-hunger work. These days, Wilson is terrified about her patients losing access to food stamps, now that Covid-19 pandemic emergency aid is ending. Across the country, many will soon face the precarious predicament of having to be frugal with both time and money, which, for the working poor, were already in short supply. “A lot of people I work with are in areas of food apartheid that don’t have grocery stores,” she says, emphasizing that she doesn’t use the term “food desert” because a desert is naturally occurring, whereas apartheids and redlining are man-made. “Until [people] can get food, I don’t want to talk to them about healthy food,” she says. That’s because dictating to people what they should put in their bodies often “only creates guilt.”

Having to be frugal with one’s money and time leads many shoppers to buy groceries in bulk to cut down on spending and trips to the grocery. But that presents another issue: space. Anyone who’s lived in a small apartment knows how to get the most out of every square inch—but that’s not easy when it comes to storing, say, a 24-pack of canned green beans. 

For Becky Schwarz, a business manager who works from home, lupus has made food shopping stressful. “An anti-inflammatory diet is brutal because it’s so much more expensive,” she says, explaining that fresh fruits and vegetables are far pricier than the cheaper, packaged foods that are harmful to her health. When her lupus flares up, sapping any energy to cook, Schwarz relies on Costco’s ready-made meals that won’t risk making her more sick (she says the membership fee is worth it).

Perceptions of frugality shift according to age and income. It’s not all gloom and doom—lots of people enjoy gamifying frugality by couponing. Take Josh Gabel, who left his job at Amazon during the pandemic to return to grad school, where he studies Indian law. Using coupons, he manages to save at least 40% on each trip to the grocery store, helping stretch his tight student budget. “I’ve gotten it down to where it’s worth the time investment, because time is money,” he says. (Gabel acknowledges that the digitization of coupons has excluded many elderly folks who aren’t as tech-savvy.) 

Gabel grew up making frybread and smoking salmon according to his Snoqualmie family’s traditions. “We always maintained salmon smoking as a preservation method,” he says, noting that uplifting native food systems is frugality on a macroeconomic scale that benefits everyone.

Coupons remind us that food prices are not only fluid—they’re sometimes made-up. Crop scientist Sarah Taber notes that markets incentivize environmental depletion, so that once-bountiful (and affordable) foods become delicacies. “Caviar used to be cheap. It was a trash byproduct of the sturgeon fishery. Then we made the sturgeon population mostly extinct, and now caviar is expensive. Lobsters, oysters, same thing,” Taber says, referencing a time when lobster was so undervalued it was served to prisoners. 

Yet supply and demand aren’t always to blame for price hikes, especially when it comes to agriculture. “There’s not a geographical restriction on where you can grow eggs,” Taber says, reminding us that egg prices soared simply because suppliers hiked prices in anticipation of an avian flu epidemic that never really came. While many Americans were forced to be frugal with their eggs, Big Egg was essentially lining its pockets. (Prices have decreased in recent weeks but haven’t returned to their pre-December baseline.)  

Rising food costs are hitting small food businesses particularly hard, and behind the scenes, many chefs are being forced to be more frugal. According to Beet cofounders Eric Rivera (a chef) and Emahlea Wilxer (an epidemiologist and dietician), that frugality might look like less-expensive cuts of meat such as hanger steak or skirt steak on menus. It might look like smaller portions, or worse, slashes in pay or hours for employees. 

Rivera notes that sometimes a historically thrifty menu item becomes so popular that it turns into a luxury. Oxtail is currently experiencing this shift, riding similar waves of food gentrification as quinoa, collards, and kale, which have all increased in price in recent years. This exacerbates food inequality, as many people wind up unable to afford the ingredients their ancestors cultivated and developed over generations because wealthier folks are snapping them up. 

Then there’s the question of “cheap” versus “frugal.” Dried beans are universally touted as frugal, but if you’re working two minimum-wage jobs, do you really have the time or energy to watch a pot for hours? For busy parents, priorities and budgets are constantly shifting. Chef Susie Snyder, who used to own a vegan meal delivery service, says her perception of frugality evolved during the pandemic. “I started making sourdough like everybody else,” she says, recalling how she and her neighbors pitched in to buy a large bulk order of flour to share. But she gives “so many fewer Fs now” and is more frugal with her meal planning efforts. She says convenience foods that create time are now the most important items on her grocery list.

Time and community were two of the only resources I had in abundance as a homeless teenager. I had time to forage and dumpster dive, sharing expired expensive tea, pastries, and other valuable finds. Searching for food I was not allergic to was a constant stress, and continues to be, despite my financial situation being more stable. 

Now, I buy groceries for people around me struggling to make ends meet. I draw on my grandmother’s economical yet flavorful Depression-era recipes and cook them for friends. I continue to annoy my family by diluting soap and—yes—saving every bag, tie, and scrap of foil. 

Across all socioeconomic strata, the main ingredient for frugality, in its healthiest form, is communal cooperation. That might mean donating garden space, giving away seeds and produce, offering childcare, advocating for better laws, sharing a ride to the grocery store, volunteering to cook, providing mutual aid, or sharing resources like foraging extraordinaire Alexis Nikole Nelson’s videos. 

Donating to food banks is helpful, but experts I spoke with emphasize that the food often doesn’t make it to people in need, with their long work hours and lack of transportation being two main reasons. As dietician Jessica Wilson puts it, giving one dollar goes much further than one can of beans.

Frugality won’t save us from poverty. Milkorno is no substitute for a balanced diet. As meager emergency Covid-19 aid ends, already-stressed communities will bear the added weight of their most vulnerable members struggling to survive poverty—and the health implications and death that come with it.

As Congress prepares to vote on this year’s reauthorization of the Farm Bill, contentious debates about expanding food benefits rage in the marble corridors. And what is Congress but community, writ large? If frugality boils down to the management of scarce resources, our leaders should take inspiration from their frugal constituents—and find ways to improve lives with as little waste as possible.

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Welcome to One Pot Bangers, Benjamin Kemper’s weeknight cooking column, where you’ll find our freshest, boldest ideas that require just one pot, skillet, or sheet pan. Busy week? We’ve got you covered with these low-effort, high-reward recipes from around the globe.

If you’ve never heard of Bolivian sopa de maní, or “peanut soup,” you might think it’s in the same gene pool as Taiwanese wedang kacang or West African groundnut stew. But unlike these, the dish’s protagonist is not the peanut but rather fall-apart beef and a vegetable drawer’s-worth of produce. Even so, the peanuts are essential: They thicken the soup while lending it a bass note of umami that will have you going back for seconds. 

Though there are as many sopa de maní recipes as there are cooks in Bolivia (not to mention parts of Peru and Argentina), where the dish is a mainstay, the most heavenly version I’ve tasted comes from my friend María Colquehuanca, a La Paz native who’s famous for the dish among her Bolivian family and friends. I love how she browns the dry pasta in oil before tossing it into the peanut-thickened broth, adding yet another layer of nuttiness. 

“I got this sopa de maní recipe from my aunt Marina, who comes from Cochabamba,” she told me. “That’s where the peanut fields are, and where the dish is said to have been invented.” María insists that the peanuts be raw and unsalted, and that they be ground to the texture of wet sand. Fried shoestring potatoes or french fries are an optional garnish; they add crunch to an otherwise spoon-soft dish.

The post Sopa de Maní (Bolivian Beef and Peanut Soup) appeared first on Saveur.

My fridge, like most, is filled with bits and bobs. There’s day-old white rice, half of a blue cheese wedge, and beef stew I cooked last weekend. A few overripe guavas, a handful of grapes, and some droopy scallions are rolling around in the crisper drawer. On the shelves inside the doors sit half-consumed cartons of milk, condiment jars down to their last dregs, and pickle brine that I keep telling my boyfriend I’m saving for deviled eggs.

As much as I make it a goal to use up existing ingredients in my fridge before buying more (for the sake of both frugality and also minimizing food waste), it often feels like the disparate odds and ends can’t possibly produce a complete meal without another grocery haul. That’s where chef Tamar Adler would disagree—because where the average home cook might see stray puzzle pieces that don’t fit together, Adler sees delicious possibilities.

In her newly released The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z, the chef shares a veritable encyclopedia of ideas for how to utilize just about any ingredient or dish in your fridge—from boiled eggs or pozole to ramen flavoring packets or the last bits of a maple syrup bottle. Though she recognizes the impossibility of representing all the leftovers across America, she says she wanted to ensure the book didn’t “uphold the idea that everybody has the same things left over in their refrigerator.” Drawn from her restaurant experience, kitchen experimentation, and global cookbook collection, Adler’s diverse recommendations range from practical (“mangoes make the best smoothies”) to reassuring (“bottarga lasts for a geologic period of time”) to unexpected (“cold frittata plumps gratifyingly in warm broth”). 

Beyond imparting thrifty tips and hacks, though, Adler’s broader goal is to give home cooks a new lease on leftovers. Far from mere scraps to be rescued from the trash, she firmly believes leftovers are building blocks to new and unexpected meal ideas. These are some of her cost-cutting principles that have transformed the way I approach my leftovers.

Cooked greens can go in countless delicious directions. I’ve learned that as long as one has leafy greens—be it spinach, kale, or turnip tops—it is impossible not to eat well. More than an affordable side dish or nutritious source of fiber, greens can be the bedrock for infinite mains. Oftentimes, all it takes to elevate greens to entrée status is a bit of fat. Combined with creamy béchamel, greens become the star of a comforting gratin. Mixed with yogurt and herbs like cumin or dill, it makes a cooling, creamy dip. Blended with toasted nuts, grated Parmesan cheese, garlic, and olive oil, it transforms into a rich pesto perfect for spreading on bread or tossing with noodles.

When in doubt, introduce crunch. Often, all it takes to give leftovers new vitality is to change the texture. “In particular, add something crispy or crunchy,” Adler advises. An old portion of beans and rice, for example, can be fried so that it gets crisp and golden-brown (a tip she adapted from Brooks Headley’s Superiority Burger Cookbook). Even a days-old sandwich can be delicious again if the outside of the bread is slathered in mayonnaise, coated in grated Parmesan, and re-griddled. “It will caramelize in a beautiful way,” she notes. One of Adler’s favorite ways to introduce crispiness is to upcycle the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of chips. She likes adding a flavorful crunch factor to pork chops by crusting them in a concoction of gremolata, mayonnaise, mustard, oil, and chip crumbs. Or, she’ll add the crumbs into cookie dough to introduce a compelling savory element that counterbalances the baked goods’ sweetness. Combined with some lime zest, the seasonings at the bottom of the bag (think Cool Ranch Doritos) even make a terrific seasoning salt for salads, rice, porridge, and myriad other dishes. 

Cores, stems, and peels are secret weapons. The leftover bits of fruits and vegetables don’t have to go straight into the compost bin. Before composting or tossing them, consider how their flavor or consistency might enhance other dishes. Things like cauliflower cores and iceberg lettuce cores can add texture to blended sauces like pesto, or make a new meal out of leftover takeout stir-fry. Odds and ends such as tomato cores, leek tops, and marjoram stems can impart lots of flavor when tossed into a braise, stew, or pot of beans. Don’t discount peels either—root vegetable peels make a fantastic frugal snack. Whenever Adler peels tubers, she instinctively sets the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and tosses the peels in olive oil. “I don’t even compost my potato peels anymore,” she says. Topped with grated cheese and thinly sliced scallions, “it’s the perfect bar food.”

Near-empty condiment and sauce containers are full of potential. Never again will I think of an old jar of peanut butter as nearing the end of its life. Rather, with a handful of affordable ingredients like garlic, fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar, those last bits can begin a new chapter as a sauce for salads and noodles. Perhaps you’re reaching the bottom of a maple syrup bottle; Adler recommends adding water to it, shaking it well, then serving the liquid over ice as a refreshing summer sip. The next time you’re close to finishing a bottle of ketchup, pour in some fish sauce, give it a shake, then add the concoction to fried rice or cold noodles for a boost of umami. Almost out of miso paste? Smash a few tablespoons of room-temperature butter into the jar to make a fancy-tasting miso butter.

Frittata, fried rice, sabzi, and minestra are reliable go-tos. These versatile dishes make a formidable quartet that Adler prepares again and again because they “can really accommodate anything” you might need to use up, she says. In the book, her “Any Vegetable Minestra” recipe includes two cups of chopped vegetables, cooked or raw, and notes that peels, stems, and cores are all fair game. In her recipe for fried rice, the chef calls for chopped crisp vegetables and chopped herbs, but leaves the choices up to the reader. 

Starchy cooking water is extremely useful as a thickener. The next time you boil potatoes, save the cooking liquid (you can also freeze it to use later)—it turns out the starchy water makes an ideal thickening agent. If you’re making a pot of soup and want a less watery consistency, pour in a little potato water. If you’ve seared a steak and have drippings left over, combine the fat with potato water to make a luscious gravy. If you’re making mashed potatoes and run out of cream, swap out a portion of the dairy for potato water—Adler promises airy results. Just make sure to taste the cooking water first, as it may contain more salt than you want to add to a dish.

Don’t pour out day-old tea. Anyone who brews a lot of tea has wound up with a half-finished kettle at some point, but that leftover liquid doesn’t have to be fated for the kitchen sink. Instead, add some lemonade to make an Arnold Palmer, or pour in a splash of seltzer and limoncello for a grown-up refreshment. Adler also recommends saving tea to make a flavorful brine for chicken or ribs, or using the liquid to make savory marbled tea eggs.

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Food writer and chef Farideh Sadeghin started cooking in college, when she collected all of Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks and often had friends over for entire meals based on the British chef’s recipes. This soup, which she adapted from a pasta e ceci recipe in Jamie’s Italy, is a meal in and of itself, full of lots of vegetables, chickpeas, and pasta. As the soup cooks, its ingredients absorb lots of the cooking liquid, transforming the dish into a thick and comforting stew. Feel free to thin with a bit of extra stock when reheating leftovers.

Featured in our cookbook: SAVEUR: Italian Comfort Food

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In Shanghai and the surrounding Jiangnan region (the geographic area south of the Yangtze River) in Eastern China, mornings often start with a steaming bowl of yang chun mian. The light, slurpable Chinese dish is easy to whip up—simply add the seasonings directly to a serving bowl, then ladle the hot broth and cooked noodles right in. For the chicken stock, which is the base of the dish, homemade is unbeatable—though a good-quality, low-sodium broth works in a pinch. Lard, a key component of any traditional yang chun mian recipe, contributes richness and flavor; if you don’t have any on hand, swap in toasted sesame oil for a fragrant and pork-free substitute. A dash of MSG further heightens the savoriness of the dish. Look for fresh thin wheat noodles at your local Asian grocer or online; they might be labeled gua mian, or long xu mian (the latter means “dragon whiskers noodles”). If you can’t find the fresh version, feel free to swap in 3½ ounces dried wheat noodles, which are sometimes called gua mian, adjusting the cook time according to the package instructions.

Featured in, “I Make These Breakfast Noodles When I Want to Transport to My Ancestral Homeland.” by Megan Zhang.

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