Make your Eid feast go further
Eid Mubarak! The holy month of Ramadan is coming to an end, and that can only mean one thing: it’s time to celebrate breaking the fast! With the focus of the festivities being on food, it’s always easy to buy way more than we actually end up eating. That’s why in today’s post, we’re looking at how you can make your Eid feast go further – so that nothing goes to waste, and you have some easy and delicious meals in the days that follow. Let the leftovers commence…
Roast meat, such as beef or lamb, is great for enjoying cold or reheated in a variety of tasty ways. Use leftover scraps of meat to make sandwiches or wraps, serve on flatbreads with any remaining dips, or go Mexican and shred it into tacos or burritos. It’s also great for adding to soups (along with any roast vegetables going spare – see below!). And don’t chuck the bones! They can be boiled up to make stock, ready for adding heaps of flavour to future meals.
Curries with lots of sauce can be bulked out with the addition of pasta if it’s mostly the sauce left, or with rice or naan to transform them into a second meal. Tagines and stews are also delicious reheated for lunch or dinner the next day, and all these dishes can be frozen in portions for easy meals in the coming weeks and months.
Leftover Biryani and rice side dishes, including sanna, can be frozen and enjoyed another day – just follow our guidelines for freezing rice to make sure you do it safely. You can also make the remnants of any rice dish into delicious deep-fried arancini balls for an Italian twist on your Eid leftovers!
Roast vegetables of any kind are perfect for blending up into warming soups (keep them in chunks if you’re after a more textured soup). They’re also great for putting in quiches and pasta dishes, using as pizza toppings or just enjoying on their own with a side helping of some other leftovers. If you’re not going to get through them all, they also freeze well – just put them in a freezer bag or an airtight container ready to bulk out a meal another day. You can also freeze the soup!
Roti are delicious cut into batons and fried up ready for dunking in any leftover dips you have in the fridge. A Zero Waste Potato and Veggie Hash is another great choice if you’ve found yourself with a few too many vegetables on your hands for the holiday.
Couscous can be reheated and enjoyed for lunch next day, but you’ll need to be careful how you do this. Allow it to cool for an hour, but no more than two hours, before putting it into the fridge. To reheat, microwave it until it’s piping hot and stir through a knob of butter if it’s a little dry. You can also freeze couscous dishes in an airtight container, defrosting and reheating in the microwave when you’re ready to enjoy it.
On the dessert front, shahi tukda makes amazing bread and butter pudding – just arrange the bread in some rabri in an ovenproof dish and bake it in the oven until it’s golden. Made too much sheer khurma? No worries – it will keep in the fridge for up to two days, so you can keep enjoying it until it’s all gone!
Finally, remember that you can freeze pretty much anything – the only real exceptions being watery foods such as salad leaves or watermelon. If you’ve got more than you can use up in meals for a few days after Eid, you can probably stick it in the freezer. Take a look at our article on foods you never knew you could freeze, and browse our Recipes for lots more culinary inspiration!
