Cooking with a conscience: Time to reduce food waste

At the world’s biggest climate conference COP26 in November last year, one dish turned out to be an inscrutable menu failure for many environmental delegates. It was the national dish of Scotland—Haggis, lamb offal—that was questioned for its heaviest carbon footprint generating 3.4kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), worse even than the Scottish beef burger (at 3.3kg CO2e). While the serving of animal products at a climate conference was widely criticised, the dish was actually a spinoff to the nose-to-tail approach to eating and not wasting any animal part practised for centuries in Scotland.

Zero-waste cooking is one way to approach and reduce food waste. Reprocessing meals into innovative and appetising options can put a stop to the monumental problem of food waste. It can also be a solution to climate crisis.

The crisis of carbon footprint left by food production is relevant mostly in the context of affluent Western countries, particularly the US, the UK, and countries in the EU, agrees Delhi-based food historian and international relations expert Pushpesh Pant. “They have a diet based on meat/red meat, mostly beef and pork, and its production on a commercial scale puts an unacceptable burden on the environment. Add to this the carbon footprint of transporting livestock or carcasses from far-off countries like Australia, New Zealand and Argentina, the problem assumes catastrophic dimensions. Food waste aggravates the problem. In India, we have traditionally sustained life on what was largely a vegan repast. There is no great problem in trying delicious options,” says Pant.

A diverse culinary canvas

Once a tradition in Indian households, cooking with scraps and peels gradually became uncommon in the last two decades, more so with easy access to finer quality products and ingredients. But culinary experts feel cooking with food scraps can add colour to the culinary canvas. It encourages cooking and eating every single part of vegetables or fruits, maximising nutrition, and minimising food wastage, besides being environmentally friendly.

“The peels and scraps of vegetables and fruits are otherwise used as animal feed or sent to the compost pile. We should reuse and reutilise every part,” says executive chef Davinder Kumar, vice president (F&B production), Hotel Le Meridien, Delhi, who has written a book Second Meals, a repertoire of delicacies made from scraps, vegetable peels, stems, roots and stocks. The book has 150 innovative recipes comprising salads, soups, smoothies and detox drinks, which are prepared using scraps.

The regional kitchen is constantly changing and becoming very diverse with influences from all over the world. From recycling leftover rice, which Italians call arancini, Indians are making big rice balls into a pakora, or leftover pulses are being converted into tikkis. This eventually has not been in practice for many years now. “Everything is super accessible on the Internet. Earlier, it was a common household chore for women, especially grandmothers, to recycle leftovers, but today there’s availability of ingredients. Like a Par eedu in a Parsi kitchen can refresh leftovers by adding eggs to them, chopped coriander and cook. Further, one can add wafers to make Wafer par Eeda—the popular Parsi-style eggs on potato chips. If done well, there are multiple uses of skin peels and seeds of vegetables. Salad cucumber seeds are edible greens; you can add water and make detox water. This is something that people must start practising in the kitchen again,” says chef and author Anahita Dhondy, who has written a book on recipes and stories of Parsi Kitchen in the book Parsi Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family.

Simple homemade experiments like jams or jellies made from overripe fruits, orange pulp used in cakes, pumpkin seeds made into halwa and pea shell pakoras are some of the tricks and tips that chef Kumar shares. In the context of convenient food choices, he feels consumers have moved away from easy homemade recipes. A sustainable way to healthy cooking is to save waste and make nutritional food which will also save the environment. “Scraps are unavoidable products derived during food preparation. These scraps, from peels to roots, seeds, stems, stalks, etc, are often thrown. They are full of nutrients. Like a broccoli stem can be used to make pesto or cheese soup. All scraps are loaded with nutrition which we ignore,” says Kumar.

Cooking with the last bit makes it more fun and creative—and less expensive. “Celery, the ends of onion, bell pepper, potato peels and carrots can be used to make broth. A good example is citrus peels for sprinkling onto fruit salads, oatmeal, bones to make good bone broth. When the bones become soft, it helps in feeding my dog,” says Ajith Cheruvattath, executive chef, DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Bangalore.

Is clean eating sustainable?

Nose-to-tail cooking can be considered as a sustainable way of eating meat and most people around the world enjoy dining on almost all parts of the animal. The West, for example, has been making the best and the most delicious offal dishes when it comes to meat—beef, pork, chicken, cows or pigs. Each part of the animal is still used in many cultures around the globe and for years unknown as it has been sacrilegious to throw away animal parts, especially in meat-eating countries. India is still far behind. “Chinese love organs. Asian markets like Vietnam or Thailand like to eat the tail or the head of the pig but Indians especially in the north buy chicken without skin,” says chef Veena Arora, chef de cuisine, The Spice Route restaurant in The Imperial New Delhi, who was born and brought up in Thailand.

While Indian cuisine is an open-hearted cuisine with influences from the western world, it still has its own way of using the concept. “Local delicacies like keema kaleji (using mutton mince and slow-cooked liver), gurda (kidney), and chicken hearts are made from less used parts of the animal which are a bit fattier. Indians like slow cooked, grilled meats in spices. Curries have been the best medium to cook such meats. Usually, Indians convert offal to curries. Intestines, poops may not be used but a stew like rich, spicy, curry that’s cooked with goat trotters (paya) and nihari (slow-cooked meat, mainly shank meat of beef or lamb and mutton, goat meat and chicken) have been part of cuisines. Goa makes use of sheep intestines in sausages, so there’s no end to getting creative,” says Michelin star chef Atul Kochhar, who has curated a dining space in Gurugram, Saga-Cuisines of India.

Kochhar feels zero-waste cooking is part of all societies. As a professional, he takes the responsibility for the profitability of the organisation. “We have always been conscious of trimming and waste. Potatoes or onions, shells of shellfish, nothing is thrown and used in stocks and gravies. In fact, some of the peels like those of potatoes, are converted into a bar snack in the restaurant,” he says.

Some places in India have a culinary tradition to utilise all parts of the animal including the brain, cheeks, tongue, intestine and testicles. Indigenous communities like the Dalit consume offal or the Bohri Mohalla in Mumbai is a hotspot for delicacies like the Surti Bara Handi, an eatery known for its nihari or 12 different varieties of meat. Macher Matha Diye Bandhakopi is dry cabbage cooked in curry and fish head which has high nutritive value. Jadoh in Meghalaya originates from the Khasi community and has rice paired with pork slow cooked in spices and pork blood. Methi Maaz uses lamb’s intestines or Vajri Khudi, a goat tripe curry from Mumbai. Kaleji Bhuna uses goat liver and kidney, served in areas with low temperatures to keep the body warm.

There is no doubt that clean eating is prominently seen in many countries, yet offals are used without inhibition in almost all parts of India. “The poor couldn’t afford to waste any edible parts of the slaughtered animal. In the hills of Uttarakhand and Nepal, bhutua is prepared entirely with offals—stomach, intestines, lungs and liver with some amount of blood. Ranga bhuta / kaccha pakka has strips of scorched skin, fat, seasoned with raw mustard oil and red chillies. In Punjab and Rajasthan, where game meats were popular, there are myriad ways in which liver, kidneys and short bread are relished. In Hyderabad, it is paye (trotters) and zuban (tongue). Then there is magaj (brain) and fish roe,” says Pant.

This may not be a sustainable way, but can it check food wastage to an extent? Meat consumption used to be occasional but now with accessibility and affordability people like more meat, proteins but if it has to be a sustainable diet it has to be more plant forward.

Coming from a Parsi family, Dhondy says sustainability has been talked about a lot, but it has been lost for a couple of years. Parsis love and eat all meats but not all parts. One dish that is close to sustainable eating is Aleti Paleti in Parsi cuisine. It’s a tossup of chicken livers and gizzards or kurchan (a mix of goat organs) which the chef remembers to relish in the Parsi town of Udvada in Gujarat.

“Offal may not have a high nutritional value but avoids waste. It’s heaty for many and is good to consume in winters and not suitable for all body types. Small details help in maintaining a sustainable balance. For example, when you cook a fish and discard bones it can be put to use in a lemon tree as bone meal is ideal for this plant. It’s like composting. Head can be used in a stock. All this has stopped in many Indian households because of the extended work. We easily access and ultimately buy fillets, boneless or leg and chest portions. This practice makes us pay a higher price for the portion too,” says Dhondy.

On the contrary, if animals are used to their full potential, why can’t vegetables be used? “Vegetarians can use skin peels to any extent. It is highly nutritious,” says Kumar.

However, the West has taken to clean zero-waste cooking with chefs turning authors and promoting zero-waste culture. Fergus Handerson published The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating in 1999 and American chef Anthony Bourdain in his documentary film Wasted! The Story of Food Waste promoted ‘use everything, waste nothing’. This docudrama highlighted ‘the criminality of food waste and how it’s directly contributing to climate change’. An ideal order in which food should be used: 1) to feed people, 2) feed livestock, 3) generate energy, 4) create nutrient-rich soil, and 5) go to landfill.

Making a meal out of repurposed scraps, British cookbook author and popular TV host Nigella Lawson, in her book Cook, Eat, Repeat, whipped a banana skin and cauliflower curry. Admitting that she is ‘extravagant’ when it comes to food, she says ‘food waste would always be a legitimate cause for guilt’.

Ikea Canada published Scrapsbook, a new cookbook for back-of-the-fridge products and food waste. The brand has made a commitment to go zero waste by 2030. The new cookbook has chefs from across North America creating recipes with waste less in the kitchen concept. It has over 50 recipes that span breakfast, mains, sides, soups, and desserts.