Secrets of Great Second Meals

A James Beard award winner offers ‘‘an invitation to ‘start riffing with the contents of your refrigerator’ and encourage a new perspective on leftovers’’ (Publishers Weekly).

When it comes to leftovers, Sara Dickerman believes that there is nothing better than figuring out the right way to reframe a good meal into another, potentially great meal. Second meals aren’t just reheating last night’s dinner. At Sara’s house, re-invention might mean pureeing roasted vegetables into a quick soup, crafting a beautiful salad with some second-day salmon, or stuffing cooked rice into roasted poblano peppers. But unlike other cookbooks that emphasize thrift, Secrets of Great Second Meals focuses on creating inviting, sophisticated, and healthy recipes that are flexible enough to adapt to what you have on hand.

Sara shows how to make the most of your food the way chefs do. With a little planning, you can look at extra food from one dinner as components to another meal that has already been prepped. Sara provides a list of the top ten most versatile dishes for multiple meals, offers advice on food storage, and includes tips on adding freshness and flavor using salt, acids, herbs, and texture. Most importantly, she gives home cooks the tools they need to improvise confidently.

Illustrated with full-color photos, Secrets of Great Second Meals makes re-imagining food for a second meal not just a good, cheap, waste-reducing thing to do, but way of making every day eating more inventive and enticing.

“[For] anyone who has ever looked quizzically at a container of leftovers while trying to plan a new meal will find what they’re looking for.” —Booklist