Why Ina Garten Doesn't Really Like Eating Leftovers

While there's nothing wrong with reheating food we worked hard to serve, not everyone is a fan of this practice, including the Barefoot Contessa herself, Ina Garten. For the celebrity chef, eating leftover food a day or two after it was first cooked is never a delightful experience since its taste has usually changed for the worse.

"I always feel like it's never as good as the first day," she said in an interview with Radio Cherry Bombe. "I just find it boring because I've already had it, and it never has the same flavor the second day." Garten admitted that growing up with plenty of leftovers at the table might have shaped her sentiment about excess food. Frankly, she prefers eating something fresh and different, not simply a repeat at the dinner table.

However, when the pandemic happened, Garten was forced to deal with leftovers while stuck at home. With grocery runs limited and specialty store orders closed, she had to figure out a way to hold onto leftovers and reuse them to make new dishes without sacrificing flavor. "I realized, if I took the leftovers and actually did something completely different with them, then it wouldn't feel like leftovers," she said.

Instead of tossing leftover food in the waste bin or forcing herself to keep reheating the same dish, the Food Network star transformed them into something new and different from the original dish. "My goal was to make them actually better in the second round," Garten quipped in the interview. She then recalled a time when she made two new dishes out of the excess sausage from a previous meal of roasted kielbasa and vegetables. First, she made split pea soup. Then, since there was still some leftover kielbasa, she sliced and sautéed them and used toothpicks to serve them as bite-sized hors d'oeuvres with a side of mustard.

Like Ina Garten, you can also repurpose leftovers into new dishes at home. For example, you can use Chinese takeout to make the ultimate fusion burritos. In a similar vein, you can use leftover rice to make any number of dishes, like stuffed tomatoes, risotto, fritters, and (everyone's favorite) fried rice. By turning yesterday's dinner into something new, you get the satisfaction of not wasting ingredients while still enjoying a fresh, flavorful meal. It's a mindset shift that makes leftovers exciting instead of boring. Plus, you get to save money since you're stretching the cost of a meal over more servings without spending more.