It happens to the best of us. Despite careful meal planning, some weeks you just end up with too many veggies in your fridge. We don’t want to leave you with more zucchini that you can’t use or the dreaded FOWP (fear of wasting produce), so we wanted to share some ideas of making the most of what you may have in your fridge right now. Here are 5 veggies that our community reports often having too many of, along with some time-tested ways to use them up so you never have to wonder what to do with too many vegetables again.
Carrots
Sure, carrot cake cookies are always an option, but our top recommendation is to combine your extra carrots with the extra celery and onion you’ve likely got around, roughly chop them, and simmer them in water to make easy vegetable stock. For bonus points (and extra flavor) try roasting the carrots first or adding fun add-ons like a bit of tomato paste, your extra parsley, or your fennel tops. You could also always just pickle them for an easy appetizer or snack.
Cilantro
Extra cilantro is a delicious invitation to make some of the best sauces around. We’re huge fans of cilantro in chimichurri, salsa verde, our zhoug, a spicy Middle Eastern hot sauce. Our favorite recent cilantro discovery has been cilantro mojo sauce, since it’s a perfect dipping sauce for a summer grill
Bok Choy
It’s probably no surprise that stir-fry is our go-to, but if you want to branch out, you should try these 10 ways to cook with bok choy. When in doubt, remember that bok choy is part of the cabbage family, so you can use it similarly to how you’d use broccoli or cabbage to good effect. Bok choy’s flavor is pretty mild, so don’t be shy about spicing it up with garlic, ginger, green onions, or sesame oil!
Zucchini
Sure, baking it into bread or cake is always an option, and a good one if you favor sweets. Our favorite trick for a bumper crop of zucchinis is to shred them and make fritters. This is especially versatile, since you can easily use up other leftover veggies like carrots, broccoli, and kale in fritters, too.
Broccoli
Our go-to way to get through a royal amount of broccoli crowns is this recipe for roasted broccoli with parmesan, basil, and lemon! Don’t forget about the broccoli stems, either, since they’re great in hummus or fritters.
I chop up my cilantro and celery leaf and put them in the freezer to flavor soups, etc… It is not beautiful to sprinkle on top of a prepared dish for presentation but it sure tastes great mixed into your cooked meal. If I get too many tomatillos and/or peppers I blend them into a puree, put in a freezer safe container and use for other recipes. Sometimes I roast all of those before I puree. Great for soups, sauces, etc… I finely dice fresh ginger root and put in a freezer safe container to be used in my cooking. You can zest a lemon, dice it up and freeze for later use. I also freeze the zested lemon whole and pull out for juicing. You can freeze tomotoes whole. When you need one in a soup, pull it out frozen and pop it into your hot pot. Great way to preserve a very ripe tomatoe. You can grate carrots and freeze them for future use as well. These are just a few things I do all of the time. Hope that gives some more ideas for all of that extra produce.
Hey Leah! Thanks for sharing these very thoughtful ideas for what to do with excess produce. These are all great suggestions! We appreciate your generosity!
Any ideas for too many potatoes?
We love making big batches of roasted potatoes and then repurposing them in other things like breakfast hash or even tacos. Large amounts of potatoes are also great when simmered and then pureed into a leftover vegetable soup. For even more ideas, check out this roundup of lots of other inspiring ways to use up your potatoes from Serious Eats:
https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/potato-recipes-what-to-do-with-potatoes.html
I had WAY too many onions, and I make a quick pickle recipe, adding dill. They turned out AMAZING! They taste like a dill pickley onion 😀
Love this! 🙌