Leftover Indian Food Fix

Here’s how you can take what’s left over from your last meal, add a little something to it and pretend you cooked up a fabulous meal from scratch!
Khaman Dhokla Handvo Idli are on our weekly menu as they are the healthiest and favorite among our whole family. My younger son Aakash take these steamed and baked delicacies in his school lunchbox as well. In fact, I started making these recipes in big batches purposely to create something new out of them for the day when I have little time to cook. Now, all these traditional recipes can be made instant as well but I prefer the fermented method.

The nice bit is that when you start with leftovers, half the job is already done. We also love that there’s something you can do with pretty much any food that’s leftover.
Leftovers are tricky—specifically the matter of what to do with them. Either you eat them and feel like you just had same-old-same-old or they sit in your fridge till you get sick of looking at them and chuck them out. And I absolutely don’t like to feed too old food to my family so I always have backup plan for the food cooked in big batches to finish in the next 3 days. Leftovers can be kept for three to four days in the refrigerator. Be sure to eat them within that time. After that, the risk of food poisoning increases. If you don’t think you’ll be able to eat leftovers within four days, freeze them immediately. Frozen food can be then turned into something delicious when needed.
I was born and raised in the family where fermented food is eaten almost everyday. I have kept the same tradition in my family to eat fermented food as much as possible. It makes sense that fermented foods might improve digestive health. In fermentation, whether for yogurt or beer, bacteria or yeast feed on the natural sugars in foods. These microorganisms create compounds such as lactic acid or alcohol, which help preserve the foods. Eating foods packed with probiotics—good bacteria—is one way to boost up your gut health. Fermented foods, like yogurt and kimchi, are rich in probiotics. The good bacteria grow during the fermentation process. So I prefer to make fermented food every week.
So as you can see in the video, I use leftover Dhokla to make Dhokla Upma (leftover idli works great as well to make puma), Dhokla Chaat and Dhokla Tikka Masala. To prepare Tikkla masala leftover khaman can be used as well. I make Handvo with vegetables like cabbage and carrot mostly so the handvo is perfect for making Manchurian. I am so glad to share here the story of my elder son Dhruv. He started refusing to eat all the fermented food I prepare. So I have been looking for ways to feed him my traditional fermented food. One day, I was starring at leftover Handvo and thinking what to do. The weather was kind of little cold and I was feeling like eating something spicy and mostly was thinking of chinese food. And I was kind of lazy to start something from the scratch so thought why not use Handvo pieces as Manchurian and voila, the new recipe was invented to feed my son…believer or not, he started loving the Handvo Manchurian and I started giving him in his school lunchbox as well! Next, I tried to work with Dhokla, since Dhruv likes spicy and colorful food, I thought of turning Dhokla into kind of Tikka or Tandori style recipe and once I saw something online similar so I went ahead and tried…agian success feeding Dhruv the food he refused to eat! So I highly recommend to try out these recipes.
I forgot to share in the video that leftover Khaman can be turned into Khamani and also for any reason, if the khaman don’t turn out well, khamani can be prepared instead of throwing away the Khaman.
So now on, don’t ever throw the good food, instead turn them into magical treats!
Looking for more leftover food fix? Try the following recipes as well.
Got some leftover daal? Daal is healthy and I never want to throw away the leftover daal so I try to make something out of it like puri and paratha, Vadas etc..

Rotis are Indian staple and I love to keep on collecting leftover 1 or 2 rotis from everyday dinner into freezer and when I have enough of them, I prepare yummy treat out of Leftover Rotis. Below is the playlist for all the leftover roti recipes like Roti pizza, Roti Nacho, Masala Roti, Roti wraps and so on.

Just like Rotis, Rice is a staple food of India as well and leftovers are part of life. Since I love rice, it never go wasted in my kitchen.
Below is the playlist for all yummy recipes that can be prepared using leftover rice.