How to rethink Thanksgiving and make new dishes with food scraps

On Thanksgiving, Americans will waste almost 316 million pounds of food. That could feed five meals to more than 47 million people experiencing food insecurity in the U.S.

ReFED, which conducted the study, noted that 58% of the food wasted on Thanksgiving comes from just two things: turkey and milk. 

But this vast amount of waste can be reduced. Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal and Something Old, Something New, focuses on maximizing ingredients in order to minimize food waste. 

From using parmesan rinds to flavor soups and beans, to making your own stock, there are plenty of ways to cook your Thanksgiving dinner more sustainably, Adler says. 

“The entire idea of a leftover is only 100 years old,” she says. “Before that, we just had food and then turned it into more food.”

Rethinking turkey

While turkey might not be everyone’s favorite Thanksgiving dish, it’s still by far the most popular. Still, the bird can be unwieldy and leftovers can get tiresome.

To start with, it may help to rethink your entire approach. Consider buying turkey thighs instead of the entire bird. The thigh is less popular during Thanksgiving, so it has the most excess at the grocery store and is generally cheaper, Adler says. 

“The last two years, I’ve gotten just Turkey thighs and roasted them really simply. And then I have some mole that I brought back from Mexico City, like, a decade ago. I thin it out with a little broth, and then warm the meat up in that,” says Adler. “We [also] make fresh tortillas, which is so simple. That’s a great way of having it be both stress-free and kind of not using any of the primal stuff that always makes me feel like I’m stepping on the throat of our food system.”

But if you do decide to roast the entire turkey (or even if you just go with the thighs), there’s a lot you can do in the days following Thanksgiving to make sure you utilize the entire bird—starting with soup or bone broth. 

Taking advantage of bones and fat

For a bone stock, Adler says you can use any mix of bones. It’s good to save a variety of meat bones prior to Thanksgiving so that after the big day, you can use your turkey carcass along with chicken, pork, t-bones or an old steak in the freezer, to make a strong and tasty stock. 

The same goes for an herb-based stock. You could use ingredients such as tomato skins, parsley stems, onion and celery scraps, and other similar produce waste to create the base of a vegetable stock. Wilting veggies in the fridge are especially good for these stocks because they’re likely to just be thrown away anyway. 

While these steps are important to take after the Thanksgiving meal, you can save your bones and veggies to make stock throughout the year. Having ready-made stock comes in especially handy over the holidays for making dishes like gravy or stuffing. 

“You can certainly eat well without new ingredients,” says Adler. “But it’s really hard to eat well without saving things, because if you don’t even have broth, you can’t make soup.”

Adler also recommends saving leftover oils and fats like bacon grease or chicken fat to add flavor to vegetable dishes or be used as a base to saute veggies when you’re making sauces and soups. 

Avoiding milk waste 

Next to turkey, milk is the other product most likely to be wasted during Thanksgiving. Minnie Ringland, a climate analyst at ReFED, says this is likely due to people buying types they don’t normally use—like buttermilk—or larger quantities than usual—for everything from mashed potatoes to pies to casseroles—but not needing all of it.

The milk may get tossed due to fear of spoilage, or just an excess of dairy types that you don’t have a regular need for. Leftovers with milk in them may also get thrown out, further compounding the problem.

There are a few ways to be more mindful and avoid wasting this product, Ringland says. First is by planning ahead and buying only the amount of milk that you need. This means taking a closer look at all the recipes that use a given product and determining exactly what they call for—instead of just buying the biggest size and figuring it out later.

Another option is compromising with a type of milk you’ll use in multiple recipes. For example, there’s a good chance half-and-half and heavy cream can be swapped in some dishes. You might not use heavy cream on a regular basis, but perhaps half-and-half could be used in your coffee after Thanksgiving. 

Freezing leftover milk is also a great way to keep it from spoiling. The freezer is like a “magic pause button” for food and can preserve milk for a while, says Ringland. 

Lastly, consider giving the excess milk (or any leftover ingredients) to friends or family that might put it to better use than you.

Gaming out sustainable sides 

Stuffing—which is many people’s favorite side dish—is a great example of a recipe that can use scrap ingredients that are already in your fridge. 

“Stuffing is old bread. That’s why it was invented. That’s the entire nature of stuffing,” Adler says. “So, if you can at least agree that the anchor of the Thanksgiving meal is amazing stuffing, then you’re off to the races.” 

As noted earlier, pre-made stock is great to use in your stuffing. But here too, you can take advantage of those sad looking vegetables in your fridge. 

Many half-eaten or wilting vegetables—including carrots, rutabaga, celery root, mushrooms, and a variety of other produce—could be incorporated into a stuffing recipe. But they could also be seasoned and roasted for a simple and delicious side dish—no new ingredients required. 

Gravy is another side that’s made using some of the leftover ingredients from the main meal. You can use either turkey drippings or pre-made stock (or both!) to make your gravy. 

To ensure Thanksgiving still feels special even with the use of a bunch of scrap ingredients, focus on buying a few core necessities that enhance what you have in the fridge. Ask yourself, “how can you use one new thing to make a dish from (December 20, 2024) seem revived and transformed?” says Adler. Fresh herbs, in particular can give repurposed veggies a new life or add extra flavor to stock or stuffing.

Lastly, there’s no reason to force yourself to make turkey for Thanksgiving—especially if it’s just going to go to waste afterwards. Instead, Adler says you can look to other cultures for inspiration on festive foods and insightful ways that they use food scraps and avoid waste. She and her family have been inspired by Mexican and Italian cuisines in Thanksgiving’s past. 

“I think taking the idea of a harvest festival from different cultures can also be really wonderful, and can end up being less stressful and turkey-roasting focused,” says Adler.