When award-winning chef and cookbook author Steven Satterfield has unused produce, those creative juices really start flowing. Because the Miller Union team makes everything from scratch, they make every effort to utilize ingredients across the three sectors of the restaurant – kitchen, pastry and bar.
“We do focus on food waste, so when we see a product that we are not moving through as quickly, we might try to turn it into a special and double down on it, passing it through the kitchen,” Satterfield says, “or we’ll make up some kind of pickle or preserve, so it doesn’t go bad. If there’s something that we don’t have a use for, but we may want to use later, we’ll do a big pickling day or ask the pastry team or bar to make a jam or syrup.”
Making the Most Out of Unused Food
Here are a few more tips from Satterfield that other chefs can consider:
- Check food in the cooler and perishables and change the menu to use those items
- Use excess food to create the family meal
- Use strawberries that may be bruised to make a syrup or soda
- Use fennel fronds to make sauces or in a cure for smoked trout, or put them into the shrimp shell stock
- Work celery leaves into a finishing sauce or add to the celery cream or a stew
- Use fall squash seeds and guts to make a sauce
- Use spent corn cobs to make a corn cob broth, to make a base for succotash or cook grits in
- Use apple cores and peels to make apple jelly or a glaze for a chicken liver mousse
You can check out his two cookbooks for more tips too: Root to Leaf and Vegetable Revelations, just released in April.
Ideas to Up Your Sustainability Status
- Conduct a waste audit
- Track food inventory
- Offer a choice of portion sizes
- Consider limiting menu items
- Use local/organic produce and meats
- Donate leftover food to local pantries
- Compost food waste and other items
- Use sustainable/recyclable food packaging
- Recycle glass and cardboard
- Install energy-efficient equipment
- Install a closed-loop oil system
- Use LED lightbulbs
- Purchase eco-friendly cleaning products
- Conserve water with low flow faucets and toilets
- Reduce delivery carbon emissions (optimize routes; deliver multiple orders; use EVs)
