Revamp your leftovers into something exciting and delicious! Are you bored to tears by your usual 10 dinners on high-rotation? If so it’s time to revamp your dinner! Revamps as we like to call it (rather than leftovers), is a brilliant way to get on top of your weekly menu, cut down the amount of food waste, spend less time cooking and save money!
What is a revamp?
The Revamps philosophy is all about transforming ‘leftovers’ from a boring re-run to an exciting sequel, without a huge amount of extra work! Growing up in a one wage family I am well versed in the art of revamping your leftovers turning them into an exciting sequel and NOT a boring re-run!! Revamps make the best easy meals for dinner!
When you aren’t sure what to do with leftovers create a great new Revamp using one or more of these four:
- Vary the ingredients to make it interesting and different e.g. from a salad to a pizza
- Add a new flavour to make it different e.g. Mexican to Asian
- Adjust your cooking method so it is different e.g. bake, stew, soup, stir fry
- Adjust your texture to make things interesting e.g. crunchy, soft
The goal is to introduce new elements so you get a revamped version with minimal fuss and we want it different enough for the family to love!
Where do you start?
- Write down your stock standard favourite recipes.
- Next to each brain storm at least one or two new Revamps using one or all of the revamp principles.
- Think also about the meals your kids love (if you can, get them involved in coming up with these ideas because this helps to build their creativity and food knowledge!)
Need Some Inspiration?
To help you get started we’ve put together some easy Revamps you might like to try as a starting point:
Leftover Roast Chicken
- Pasta salad with chicken (we’ve varied the ingredients to add pasta, natural yoghurt and flavour with curry powder)
- Chicken tacos/ burritos (we’ve added new flavour by quickly flash frying strips of capsicum, sliced onion and adding in shredded chicken, paprika and a bit of lime juice. We’ve added new ingredients such as salad vegetables and tacos which add a great texture too)
- Thai Chicken Salad (we’ve added new flavour with lime juice and fish sauce to the chicken, added ingredients of cellophane noodles, cucumber, lettuce and basil)
- Chicken and Cheese Pie (we’ve varied the ingredients and cooking method to make an ‘open’ pie)
Leftover Roast Pumpkin/ Sweet Potato
- Pumpkin, feta, baby spinach and red onion pizzas (we’ve changed the texture, ingredients, and flavour)
- Spinach salad with roast pumpkin, feta, chickpeas and red onion (we’ve changed the ingredients and flavour)
- Pumpkin and Potato soup (we changed the cooking method and texture)
Roast Beef (Meat)
- Meat and Vegetable Soup (we changed the cooking method, texture, ingredients)
- Stir Fry (we changed the ingredients, flavour, cooking method)
- Shepherd Pie (we changed the ingredients, flavour, cooking method and texture)
- Giving your leftovers a revamp makeover will help you convert your leftover into an exciting sequel and get you cooking weeknight meals in no time at all!
Louise D’Allura, Home Economist and Chief Meal Planner
