What common ingredient do you find yourself wasting the most of?

[Michael_in_TX]

We've all done the buy-one-pound-of-exotic-spice-only-to-use-one-tbl-before-it-goes-bad thing, but this evening I realize I throw away a lot of a very common -- and thankfully cheap -- ingredient: tomato paste.

They come in those six ounce cans, but you only need a tbl or two for a recipe. I try to put it in a small deli container, but it always seems to go bad before I can use it again. (I tried freezing once, didn't seem to work right.)

Thankfully, my local grocery store is now carrying affordable ($2) tubes of tomato paste. General consensus on the internet is that due to the tube-packaging and that these tubes are preserved more with salt rather than citric acid, one should be good for 30-45 days in the fridge.

But this did get me thinking....what other ingredients do we, uncomfortably and sheepishly, end up throwing out a lot?

[texastweeter]

Celery.

[CHNeal]

So much so this! I swear my wife buys it so we always have some bad in the fridge.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

We freeze celery for stock and such, doesn't do so good for things you actually want celery in, but for stock it's quite fine.

[bbqLuv]

Buy a head of celery, use one or two stocks, and store it in the crisper until the rest are soft and flimsy--the correct texture to toss them out.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Until I started making more stock, I woulda said meat. My wife doesn't like fat and being just the two of us we don't always "clean the bone" when eating. Used to be that stuff would go in the trash, now it lives in a ziploc in the freezer until it's time to make some stock.

We consistently (ok fine maybe 2x a year max) throw out expired ketchup, hardly use the stuff but gotta have a bottle in the fridge just in case and of course when we go to use it... can't cause it's expired

[Finster]

Wait. What? Ketchup expires?
I don't feel so good...lol

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

holehogg unfortunately not, I don't have amazing knife skills. Mosca did one, and Gboss did a chuck one. https://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/fo...wn#post1162970 https://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/fo...wn#post1253142

[holehogg]

ItsAllGoneToTheDogs thank you, for some or other reason was convinced it was you. Appreciated.

[Skip]

We buy most of our spices from the local Food Coop in small quantities yet some do get old and lose their punch so out they go and we start over.

[Jfrosty27]

Spices. Any spices except garlic and onion powders. As noted somewhere above, it’s buy new bottle, use a teaspoon, throw it away 6 months later.

[GolfGeezer]

Definitely rubs - buy too many, all good, but hard to use up a whole shaker of any one kind.

[DaveD]

Water.

[Andrrr]

Probably true

[RiverJeff]

Protein rubs and a ton!

[DTro]

Beer- I just can’t figure out where it goes.

[DaveD]

You are clearly in need of assistance. I volunteer.

[IowaGirl]

Quite some years ago, I started freezing tomato paste and it really does work quite well. The tip I have is to drop appropriate sized dollops of the paste onto a sheet of parchment paper, silicone mat, or other flexible surface. Freeze hard, peel off the individual lumps off the surface, put said lumps in freezer bag, and return to freezer. I started this when I had one too many opened cans of store-bought paste go bad in the fridge. Nowadays I make my own tomato paste from homegrown 'maters, and this is the way I preserve the paste.

Potatoes and celery seem to go bad before they get used up in my household.

[Texas Larry]

I just threw out a pile of unused and very old commercial rubs. I foolishly bought giant containers of this stuff and used only a little. I now make most of my my own rubs, and we buy spices in bulk from a local market.

Any unused produce and produce trimmings either goes to our chickens or to garden compost.

[Draznnl]

Mayo. We rarely use it. When we do, it’s a tablespoon or two for a recipe and the bottle goes on a shelf on the door of the fridge where it stays until it turns green and gets pitched.

[shify]

Any time I buy a bunch of fresh herbs (parsley, cilantro) I use a handful for 1 dish and then about 2 weeks later throw out a bag of brown, slimy things that used to be herbs. At best I’ll remember to use it a second time but don’t think I’ve even used up every last cilantro or parsley leaf.

[Andrrr]

I feel like I use a lot of cilantro and I STILL can probably count on one hand the number of times I've used it all.

[SheilaAnn]

+1

[SmokeyGator]

Not beer!! That is for sure. Also yes beer is an ingredient. My secret chili recipe requires Guinness Extra Stout. Not that "pub can" stuff but the real deal. The stuff in the glass bottles with the label "original" or "extra stout". IF I can find it, I will use the "foreign extra stout". Short of that, whatever IPA I happen to have on hand works. The point is you do not want malty sweetness. Stout is malty, but that is why I use the original or foreign variety, it is more acidic/hoppy than the stuff in the cans.

[bbqLuv]

Pub beer by 10 Barrel brewing company--Nice lager, although not PBR

https://10barrel.com/beer/pub-beer/

[smokin fool]

I gotta go with fruits and veggies, buy them and not use them.
I'm really wasteful with dry rubs, nearly as much gets on the counter as on the meat.

[Panhead John]

Lettuce, all the time. Cilantro always gets thrown away, 3/4 or more of the bunch. Made some pico last week and just threw out the remaining rotten rest of the bunch. Occasionally green onions but not often. After using them I’ll wrap them in a paper towel and then into a ziploc. They’ll stay good for a solid 2 weeks that way. I just threw out some kind of spice the other day……Best By April 2016…

[Michael_in_TX]

Especially romaine, which you have to buy in those large bags. All I need is like four slices for two hamburgers.....

[Murdy]

We have that problem with any fresh spice we buy.