Stalks, Tops And Leaves: The Half You Are Throwing Out

The offcuts bin is full of ingredients that only need different cooking.

Broccoli stalks, cauliflower leaves, the tops of beetroot and carrot, coriander roots, the dark green of a leek, the tough outer leaves of a cabbage. These are not scraps, they are simply parts with a different texture that need a different approach from the parts we are used to. A broccoli stalk peeled of its fibrous outer layer and sliced thinly is sweet, crisp and closer to a good stem vegetable than to a leftover. Cauliflower leaves roasted hard until the thin edges char are one of the best things the plant produces, and most of them go out with the packaging.

The general rule is that tougher parts want either more time or thinner cutting, and often both. Slice a thick stalk across the fibres rather than along them and it becomes tender at once. Give a woody stem a head start in the pan before the tender parts join it. Or lean the other way and cook the tough parts long and slow into something soft and savoury while the delicate parts go in at the very end. What does not work is treating the whole vegetable as one thing and cooking it for a single length of time.

Even the genuinely inedible has a use. Onion skins, stalk ends, mushroom stems, the tough tips of asparagus and the outer leaves of leeks all give flavour to a pot of water and can be strained out afterwards. Keeping a bag of trimmings for that purpose turns the weekly offcuts into the base of the next dish, and it costs nothing but a corner of space. Once you start cooking this way it becomes hard to look at a whole vegetable and see only its most fashionable part.