3 Easy No-Waste Recipes to Help You Save Money

1. Chicken bacon ranch salad recipe

The first of my no-food-waste recipes is absolutely delicious. I am making a chicken bacon ranch chicken salad. Now, of course, I'm using up what I already have on hand, and I have a little bit of rotisserie chicken left in my freezer from when I got a rotisserie chicken a while back.

I like to divide up any extras I have right away, put them in a freezer bag, and pop them in the freezer. Because, just like in this case, I can easily make something super quick since it does not take too long to thaw it out, and it is already fully cooked.

So I am chopping that up a little bit more, adding that into my bowl.

Then, I'm going to add in some Colby-Jack cheese, bacon bits, and my own homemade ranch as well.

I’m actually blending up cottage cheese, so this is actually a little higher protein than normal, adding in half a pack of dry ranch, and mixing that all together until the ranch taste is to my liking.

You can always substitute dry ranch and sour cream, or you can use the ranch dip that you buy in the grocery store. But this is literally only taking five minutes to put together and it is so, so good. Perfect poolside snack.

2. Watermelon popsicles recipe

Now, it is a rare occasion where we have leftover watermelon or the watermelon doesn't get eaten before it starts to get too soft.

But we had a busy week this week, and Winston was actually sick at the beginning of the week, so we didn't get through this watermelon as quickly as we usually do before it started getting super soft.

And this is the perfect solution to use up this extra fruit. That way it doesn’t go to waste.

We are going to make some super quick and easy popsicles. Literally, all you do is blend up the watermelon. Or if you have a juicer, you can juice the watermelon.

Then, you strain the juice out, pour it into your popsicle molds, freeze them, and they are so good.

Now, of course, there are times when melons might not necessarily be as sweet one week but sweeter the next week. So, if you get a watermelon that's not super sweet now, and you want to add in some honey or any other kind of sugar, you can definitely do that to these as well.

But for this round, this watermelon was super sweet, so I didn't have to add anything to it. The juice tasted delicious. And this is such a great way to use this up and repurpose it.

3. Leftover chicken recipe

Lastly, I'm going to make a quick and easy use-it-up type supper. Now, y'all know when I do these, we are using what we have on hand, to make a delicious meal for my family. And I do not have a recipe for this, so I’m starting with two leftover chicken breasts.

I'm cutting them up and seasoning them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning. You play around with it, use whatever seasonings you like.

And then for the veggies, I just cleaned out the veggie drawer. We've got a zucchini that was getting squishy. We've got a little bit of mushroom left. We had some tomatoes that needed to be used up. They were getting soft. And then I had a little bit of carrots that needed to be used up as well.

I'm going to go ahead and cook that chicken until it's cooked through then remove that from the pan and add in our veggies. I'm going to give everything a season, and then we're just going to let those finish cooking.

The mushrooms do not take long at all, so I just add those at the end.

Now, heavy cream is a staple in our home. That is something that I always try to keep in my fridge because you can make so many different things with it.

So we are going to use some of that heavy cream, and we're going to make a super basic cream sauce with this. Now, if you don't have heavy cream, you could add some teriyaki sauce or some soy sauce.

Now that the veggies are cooked, we're going to go ahead and add our chicken back in. I'm also going to add some minced garlic. If you don't have minced garlic, that is totally okay. Just add some garlic powder.

We're going to mix everything together and then we're going to add in our heavy cream.

I'm not measuring. I'm adding in enough to just barely cover all of the veggies and the chicken. Once it starts heating up and simmering, it will start thickening up and we're just going to add in whatever cheeses we had on hand. I have a little bit of parmesan cheese left and a little bit of Italian blend, so I’m folding those in.

No-waste recipes

No-waste recipes should never be bland or unimaginative. Just get creative with the items you’re trying to use up, add plenty of seasoning, and enjoy your latest creation. Tell me down below what your favorite no-waste meal is.