Woman shares one unexpected ingredient to make your pasta sauce taste incredible: 'That is gold'

People always say one person's trash is another's treasure, but one TikToker has shared an example of how to turn your own trash into treasure. 

The scoop 

In a video shared with her over 400,000 followers, Charlotte Palermino (@charlotteparler) shows how to put a food item that usually gets tossed to good use. 

"This is the most important thing Italian women have taught me about cooking," she says at the beginning of the video over a pot of red sauce being cooked behind her. 

"Don't you dare throw out those parmesan rinds," Palermino continues. "That is gold that is going to make your sauce umami-esque." 

@charlotteparler #greenscreenvideo I would like to say a prayer for all the rinds I've wronged 😢 #food #italian #italianfood #pasta #cooking #sugo #cheese #cookinghack ♬ Mambo Italiano - Dean Martin

"I would like to say a prayer for all the rinds I've wronged," she wrote under the video. 

It is important to note that parmesan rinds in all or nearly all cases do not contain wax, while other cheeses often do have wax in the rind. Rinds with wax in them should not be eaten. 

How it's helping 

Food waste is a major and growing problem, with around 119 billion pounds of food thrown away annually in the United States alone, and a staggering 42 billion pounds of that is thrown out in homes.

This leads to food being the single largest component in landfills in the country, and once there, as it decomposes, it pumps out pounds of methane — a gas 28 times more powerful at warming the Earth than carbon dioxide. 

Composting is a great option to keep food out of landfills and benefit consumers and the environment, but not everyone has access to it, and not everything — like cheese rinds — can be composted. 

For this reason, hacks like the one shared here by Palermino to help keep food out of landfills have become increasingly popular, with people sharing theirs for everything from turning crystallized honey into a delicious treat to making use of the last bit of mustard left in a jar. 

What everyone's saying 

Commenters responded positively to Palermino's hack, and for good reason. 

"I [didn't] even know we should put rinds in the sauce … [I] am such a bad cook," wrote one.  

"We throw rinds into soups too — a Parm rind in Italian wedding soup is [a-ok emoji]," commented another. 

"Got a whole shelf of rind in the freezer," boasted one proudly, to which Palermino responded, "You're living life right." 

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