Mary-Ellen McTague, Co-founder of Eat Well MCR and chef-partner at Treehouse Hotel, Manchester:
Make a fermented liquor spread
Don’t throw away ferment liquor — make a Marmite-type spread by reducing it to a syrup. You can mix different ferments; it turns out slightly differently every time. Bring it to a boil in a pan, skim it, then simmer until it thickens into a sticky-sweet, salty, sour syrup, stirring towards the end so that it doesn’t catch. It’s lovely on toast with butter.
Give caramelised onions a kick
Caramelise onions with star anise to enhance flavour — this completely transforms stocks, sauces, stews and curries. When I worked at the Fat Duck, we’d add about 3g of star anise per kilo of onions, which we’d caramelise for ages in a heavy-based pan until the onions were really deep dark brown. The anise flavour gets cooked out but enhances the onions.
A quick route to home-made butter
Freeze cream if it’s going out of date, then defrost it and shake it vigorously in the container for 20-30 seconds to make home-made butter. The expanding ice crystals break the emulsion and the butter separates from the whey. Use the whey in cakes, white sauces or to poach fish in. (You could use it as your chicken marinade but because the cream’s been frozen, it’s not going to have the same acidity as you get in cultured buttermilk that you’d buy from a shop.)
Minal Patel, Chef-patron at Prashad , Bradford:
Use your herb stalks
I don’t like waste in the kitchen. When using fresh herbs such as coriander when making chutney or stocks, add the stalks as well as the leaves — they give you extra flavour as well as quantity. When blending ginger to make a fresh masala, don’t bother removing the skin, just wash it and add it to the blender whole. I also like to add whole chillies (stalk removed). The seeds are what give you flavour and texture.
Too salty? Add raw potato
Add a roughly chopped raw potato to dishes that are over-salted, and cook over a low heat for 5-8 minutes to absorb some of the salt and fix your dish. If your food is too spicy, you can reach for more than just dairy products to take the heat down a notch: a little sugar, something acidic like tomato juice, lime or lemon, or a nut butter that’s rich in fat can help dissolve the capsaicin and calm down your dish.
Jane Baxter, Chef and co-owner of Wild Artichokes , Devon:
Trimmings add flavour
If you are making a soup or risotto with squash or pumpkin, use the seeds and stringy inners along with any other vegetable trimmings to make a stock. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain. This was something I learnt at Riverford, where we had an annual pumpkin day for the public. We had to make thousands of portions of soup. We soon found we got a better colour and a more concentrated flavour if we recycled the trimmings.
Save fat for the best roasties
Since the price of oil has doubled, I always save the fat from chicken, beef or veal stock. After making it, I chill it down, then take the fat off. If I’m not going to use it immediately, I’ll pass it through a muslin cloth to remove impurities, then store it in a plastic tub and keep it in the fridge for two weeks to a month. It will also freeze. My favourite is guinea fowl fat — it makes amazing roast potatoes.
