Woman shares 'genius' hack to make the most out of your leftovers: 'I wish I knew this sooner'

TikToker Lauren (@llaurens_day) had a great tip for getting the most out of her takeout dinner, including the leftover sauce. 

The scoop

"To be honest… one day we ordered takeout and I thought, we always [have] soooo much butter chicken sauce left, why can't I just save it?" Lauren wrote in the description.

@llaurens_day To be honest… one day we ordered takeout and I thought, we always has soooo much butter chicken sauce left, why cant i just save it? So I did! I froze it and used it for another meal and it was still just as delicious. #foodsaving #foodwaste #savinghack #foodhack ♬ dont balme me - speed up songs 🤍

Lauren had finished the chicken in her Indian dinner but still had lots of delicious sauce left over. So, she froze it to see if she could use it later. Sure enough, she was able to whip up more chicken later, and once thawed, the sauce was a perfect addition!

"I wish I knew this sooner!!!" Lauren wrote in the comments.  

How it's helping

If you spend good money on takeout, you should get as much value for it as possible. Throwing out perfectly good sauce is basically burning money. That's not something folks can afford to do given the price of groceries.

Besides the budget considerations, food waste is a significant source of pollution. Sure, it can be composted to keep those gases down, but it's still better to eat food than let it go in the trash.

Food waste is also an issue upstream. Land and resource demands on agriculture are only growing, which makes the ingredients that go into your meals all the more valuable. Throwing out good food wastes a lot of energy that goes into making it.

There are plenty of other ways to minimize food waste besides freezing your unused takeout. Too Good To Go, Flashfood, and Misfits Market all help you save money by getting food before it's on the way out. More ideas can be found in our guide on how to manage leftovers. 

What everyone's saying

Commenters were all in on freezing leftover butter chicken sauce.

How often do you make a meal out of leftovers? Almost every day 🗓️ A few times a week 🍕 Every once in a while 🥙 Leftovers are gross 🤢 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

"Genius!" one viewer wrote.

"Why have i never thought of this," another said.

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