During the hustle and bustle of the day's mise en place lately, I contemplate how chefs and foodservice professionals always seem to find a way to navigate the times by creatively expressing their skills in ways that not only nourish their customers but potentially inspire their minds with old ways to address new challenges. Food waste commercialization is front and center these days.

There are likely dozens of social and economic reasons why we should address and activate surpluses in foodservice operations, but we should remain steadfast in our frugality around all foodstuffs. Unbeknownst to the consumer, chefs and cooks at all levels have always utilized food trim innovatively.

Acting today as more of a messenger and steward, we can challenge ourselves and a community of cooks to approach and develop differently despite already being leaders in food frugality. We have significantly reduced compostable usable surpluses by identifying areas of food production trim before production starts. 

While the team is creating menus and developing recipes, we look at points that create large surpluses of usable food trim, creating recipes from those bits. Show me your most manicured dishes, and we can create exciting, flavorful, and, most importantly, commercially viable dishes from what would be in the trash bin of a less savvy and ambitious kitchen. Don't be that kitchen who tosses the dollars away. Your boss and the environment, thank you. Getting out ahead of the areas of your recipes that create food trim and creating monetized streams for them is a 360º win for everyone.

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This mindset is valid in every professional kitchen in every segment of foodservice forever and ever. One such example is when, recently, the team was asked to prepare a vegan pasta dish to support a conference in the field showing our upcoming vegan plant-based cream sauce. As a spicy and textural addition, we designed a ratatouille-style stewed vegetable dish while boosting the flavor by adding vegetables. This recipe featured both our Vegetable Liquid Stock Concentrate and our Harissa. The fabrication and manicuring of the local produce created a generous amount of usable food trim. 

Knowing this, the team artfully designed a charred vegetable spread reminiscent of a baba ganoush, again featuring the utilization of the Vegetable Liquid Stock Concentrate, this time with the addition of our Master's Touch Roasted Garlic Concentrate. Simple to make but complex in flavor and all with the too often forgotten food waste.

I love how Custom Culinary and our branded product portfolio are set up to be a complete solution for addressing another critical area of importance for kitchen operations. Don't Waste any more time, and let's get to work. Flavorful dishes await.

#BeTrueToTheFoodWaste
Chef Michael Manno