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Cooking usually discarded food items


Avumede

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From watching Iron Chef over the years, I've found out that there's a few things that I had no idea were edible... but evidently they are. I'm not talking about offal, this is beyond that.

First thing I discovered was that you can deep-fry fish scales. I'm not sure of the technique, but it's possible, and you can eat it, and I suppose it must taste good.

The other revelation was corn silk. I always throw mine away after husking the corn, but evidently you can eat it. I didn't catch the technique to cook it, but perhaps a light blanching or a quick saute would do.

I wonder if anyone can shed more light on those techniques, or share other commonly thrown out items that evidently are edible?

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Corn silk makes an excellent tisane for soothing the stomach. Just brew it up with some boiling water, like any other tea or tisane.

How "far out" do you want? The big, thick broccoli stems (the trunks of the trees), peeled and diced? Cauliflower leaves? The fat trimmed from meat, rendered and turned into cracklings?

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Whenever I go out for sushi, the sushi chef likes to give me little extras. Last time, he took the backbone out of the aji (Spanish mackerel?) I had ordered and deep-fried it until it was crispy. It was wonderful. Who knew fish bones could taste so good? :biggrin:

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Not really far out, but things that are often wasted -

If you are making butternut squash risotto, roasting the seeds makes for a lovely crunchy topping to scatter over.

If your bacon has a thick rind, and you are not a rind fan, at least fry it after trimming it off, and use the rendered fat to cook with.

And I understand there are one or two things you can do with the breasts once you have removed the good parts of the chicken :biggrin:

I love animals.

They are delicious.

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And I understand there are one or two things you can do with the breasts once you have removed the good parts of the chicken :biggrin:

This leads to ....

I use chicken carcasses to make chicken stock. There's plenty of leftover meat on them for flavor. You have significantly less fat to deal with. And it's economical.

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And I understand there are one or two things you can do with the breasts once you have removed the good parts of the chicken :biggrin:

This leads to ....

I use chicken carcasses to make chicken stock. There's plenty of leftover meat on them for flavor. You have significantly less fat to deal with. And it's economical.

Sure. That's a good use for chicken breasts.

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Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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Sure. That's a good use for chicken breasts.

Is that what they're for? :laugh::laugh: I though they were just decoration. Though I have convinced my kids that I was sacrificing to serve THEM the best parts. (e.g. "no, no you have that lovely breast, I'll make do with these icky thighs...")

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This is pretty pedestrian, but I save vegetable scraps (carrot nubs and skins, onion nubs and skins, garlic nubs and skins, etc), freeze them in a jar of water, and make stock when I've got enough stuff.

Also, corn cobs. After cutting corn off of them, I boil them up for soup or stock. They've got lots of flavor.

After juicing a lemon, I freeze the de-juiced halves. Just stick them in a ziplock and -- voila -- you've always got lemon zest. It's really easy to grate off when they're frozen, too.

amanda

Googlista

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This is a little OT but I love to see how far I can make a chicken go, especially the free-$$-range chickens I've been buying. I cut them into pieces and rip the skins off. Often, I'll boil the the pieces. This way you have chicken meat and chicken stock. I save the backs in the freezer for making stock later. The skin, I spread out on a cookie sheet in a single layer (very Silence of the lambs) and cook it on about 200 all afternoon. I drain the fat and save it for cooking and the skins I chop up for cracklings. Just a smidge of them and you have gorgeous quesadillas and glorious salad toppings. All this for about 4 or 5 bucks!

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