One Instagrammer shared an easy way to reduce kitchen waste while making a fun seasoning to amp up your cooking.
The scoop
Carleigh Bodrug (@plantyou) is an influencer with over 5 million followers who shares recipes and tips for wasting less in the kitchen. In one video, they show viewers how to make seasoning out of old onion skins.
In a video series called "Scrappy Cooking," Carleigh demonstrates the many ways you can save and reuse food scraps. You will need to set aside onion skins to prepare for this tip. Each time you peel an onion while preparing a recipe, you can toss the skins into a bag in the freezer.
After you have collected enough skins — Carleigh recommends four cups — rinse them off by soaking them in water for about 30 minutes. Next, you will need to dry them completely. Start by using a cloth and then pop them onto a baking sheet. Put them in your oven on its lowest setting for three hours.
This should leave you with dry and brittle onion skins that can be easily blended into a powder. Carleigh recommends using a blender or coffee grinder. Put your new powder into a shaker bottle and add it to a recipe of your choosing. The seasoning will give your food a nice oniony zip.
How it's working
Reducing food waste is a great way to be more environmentally friendly. In the United States, the average family throws out around $1,500 in food a year. According to Feeding America, "People waste 92 billion pounds of food annually, equal to 145 billion meals."
In addition to the wasted money, much of this lost food ends up in landfills, where it decomposes, releasing methane gas. Methane is a potent climate-warming molecule with around 28 times more warming power than carbon. It is released as organic material breaks down.
The Environmental Protection Agency found that "the methane emissions from MSW landfills in 2022 were approximately equivalent to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from more than 24.0 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year."
Many food scraps can be repurposed. Vegetable skins can be saved to create a rich vegetable broth. You can use this hack on just about any other vegetable or fruit skin, including tomatoes and citrus.
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Definitely 😭 What people are saying
Folks on Instagram were excited to learn about this interesting way to reuse onion skins.
One person was inspired to try it with another allium, saying: "Wow! I have never even thought of using the peels before; I have no idea what this will taste like, but I'm guessing it will be just as good if not better with my shallot skins!"
Someone else said: "I'm doing this. Thank you so much."
"Absolutely amazing," another person added.
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