Kitchen Tip to Saving Leftover Canned Items

Have you ever tried to save any unused canned items but only to let it go to waste?

Here’s one likely scenario. Perhaps you needed to only use a tablespoon of tomato paste out of the 6oz can and so you tried to save the remaining paste to “use another time”. And then somehow that can with leftover paste (which may or may not have been covered with tin foil) gets promptly forgotten behind other items in your fridge. Then several days (or weeks) later while you are cleaning out your fridge, you discover that can with the paste along with other unmentionables.

Yikes! Yep, I’ve been there, done that.

So, I’ve had to come up with a way to not ever let any canned item leftovers go to waste and it involves ice trays.

Yes, you heard me right: Ice cube trays.

You know those plastic trays with little pockets that you would pour water in and freeze so that you can get ice cubes when needed. Well, the last 2-3 houses we’ve lived in, we’ve been blessed to have a working ice maker as part of our fridge that we haven’t had to freeze water to make ice cubes manually. And so those trays have found other usefulness in my kitchen.

So, here’s how it works:

1. You did not get to use all of the contents of the can you just opened.
2. You scoop out whatever is left and put them in the above mentioned ice cube trays.
3. You freeze those trays
4. After they are frozen well, you pop them out of the tray and store them in freezer bags or containers.
5. Next time you need to use some of the same (remember you did not need the whole can the last time), you simply take what you need out of the freezer, thaw them and use them.

Simple, right?

Some of the common canned items that I find myself freezing in cubes are: tomato sauce, tomato paste, coconut milk, refried beans, black beans….etc….you get the idea.

By the way, this trick doesn’t have to be limited to just canned leftover items. You can practically do it with anything. For example:

• When we have lots of lemons from our tree, I have some of the squeezed juice in ice trays so we can use that lemon juice even during the off season.
• Sometimes I make my own curry paste to use in my cooking and I usually make a big batch so that I can freeze the unused portion in cubes and use them in small portions as needed.
• Freezing special treats (like chocolate cheesecake bombs) in bite size portions also work well since it aids with portion-control while also employing my pinciple of “make once, use many times” (adapted from the technology slogan of “write once, run everywhere”).

Well, I do hope these ideas are helpful to spark your own creativity in the kitchen. Feel free share how you used these ideas in the comments below.