While making a turkey pot pie with the last of my Christmas leftovers, I realised an important point. Dishes like pot pies rely on building in flavour at every step of the recipe – you simmer the chicken (or turkey carcass in this case), then use the broth to cook the veggies. This builds flavour into every single step of the recipe, resulting in a much more nuanced and tasty dish at the end.

You can accomplish the same end by assuming you’ll re-use liquids from each step of the cooking process. Simmering vegetables? Use that liquid as a vegetable stock for baked beans, soups, or stews. Same with meat – I make awesome baked beans from ham stock.

You can even go off at a tangent and simmer veggies in milk, then make a roux to thicken the milk as a white (or cheese) sauce to go with the veggies.

Just pause for a moment when looking at what you are making and see if you can’t use the components of dinner in multiple applications 🙂