A Masterclass in Zero Food Waste

A full plate wasted is a life wasted. Right from the Nobel gala dinner to the meals eaten in the comfort of homes and restaurants, food waste is on everybody’s lips. Everyone is stepping up to the plate and cutting down on food waste. From citrus peels to coriander roots, chefs and food historians say Indian kitchens have always known how to stretch ingredients. Today, climate change, rising costs and shrinking budgets make those old instincts more relevant than ever.

Every Meal Matters

When Chef Jose Varkey, a veteran of 45 years and one of Kerala cuisine’s most authoritative voices on the history of food, talks about food waste, he begins with belief. “Food is divine,” he says, the way one might state the obvious. “Under no circumstances are you supposed to waste food.”

It’s a sentiment that once shaped entire cuisines across India. Before fridges thrummed in every home and “freshness” became synonymous with shrink-wrapped produce, cooks worked with instinctive frugality, coaxing flavour from every stalk, peel and stem. Varkey remembers a world where food did not travel far. “What is locally available becomes the food of that area,” he says. In monsoon-hit Kerala, that meant pickling to survive damp months, drying jackfruit seeds to last the year, and treating yams like a pantry you could store in the soil.

Food For Thought

For Chef Bharat Alagh, vice president for operations and culinary at Orange Tiger Hospitality, the shift is personal. He started cooking in 1997, at a time when sustainability “was not even a question” in hotel kitchens. By the early 2000s, he noticed the tide turn. Suddenly, every peel and stalk had potential — if only you knew what you were doing. “The moment you think of sustainability, you’ll find solutions,” he says. “The only thing is, you need the knowledge of how to do it better.”

His first lessons were at home. In his grandmother’s kitchen in the 1980s, cauliflower, turnips, peas and mint were sun-dried when in season and stored for the months they vanished from markets. At a time before cold storage reshaped the Indian kitchen, drying was the only guarantee of winter flavour. “We Indians have been doing this for ages,” Alagh says.

Scrap Appeal

Across India, similar stories repeat. Chef Avin Thaliath, co-founder and director of Lavonne Hospitality, recalls how his mother transformed scraps into delightful little dishes: vinegar from apple and pear peels, candied citrus zest for Christmas cakes, and watermelon rind simmered into halwa. “We were brought up with these as very ordinary ideals,” he says. In Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, peels and stems still find their way into everyday cooking. In the South, sambars often rely on the parts other regions throw away. “We forget that many parts we discard are nutritious, flavourful and part of our traditional manner of cooking.”

Professional kitchens mirror this ethic, though with sharper discipline. During his training at Taj Gateway, Bengaluru, Thaliath remembers coriander roots — often seen as waste at home, being washed, simmered and served as a complimentary rasam for arriving guests. In Alagh’s world, hotel chefs routinely stretch ingredients because costs, consistency and creativity demand it. Just last month,

the Indian Culinary Forum, where he serves as vice president, shot a series of zero-waste masterclasses featuring dishes made entirely from peels, stems and trimmings. “These are hotel chefs cooking for hotels,” he says. “This is not a household gimmick.”

At home, however, psychological barriers linger. The biggest challenge, chefs say, is the fear that scraps will stay fibrous or tough. Nevertheless, the right technique transforms them. Low, slow cooking extracts oils from citrus peels; blanching softens stems; grinding turns peels into powders. Thaliath swears by citrus peel infusions. “Lemon, orange, even grapefruit. Slow infusing releases their natural oils,” he says.

Alagh adds a contemporary twist. “These Insta chefs and YouTube chefs — many of them don’t know what they’re mixing,” he says with unfiltered honesty. Combining seeds with opposing densities or adding citrus to milk at the wrong stage can ruin food or upset digestion.

Savour & Savings

Households spend 10–12% of their income on perishables, and with smarter planning, storage and reuse of stems and peels, Alagh says families “can easily save another two to three per cent.” But the real challenge is mindset. He notes how common habits — like peeling vegetables before washing them — are small yet stubborn. Varkey traces frugality to older generations who cooked fresh, seasonal food out of necessity. Today’s reheated, processed and delivery-heavy meals, he argues, have broken our link to nourishment and flavour. “Reheating food is poisonous,” he says, blaming convenience culture for nutritional decline.

Food Frugality

Frugal traditions endure wherever budgets demand discipline — limited menus, daily cooking, and stretching ingredients across multiple meals. Varkey recalls his 25 years with a barefoot-luxury hotel group, where the entire culinary philosophy revolved around local produce and minimal waste. “Less is more,” he says. As urban kitchens try to navigate shrinking budgets, these once-ordinary habits are resurfacing: Citrus-peel jam, banana-stem sabzi, freezer bags of scraps for stock.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

Foodsaver Tips

• Store vegetables in breathable containers.

• Plan meals before shopping. Buy only what you’ll cook.

• Keep a “use first” box in the fridge for older produce.

• Freeze leftover herbs, stocks and vegetable scraps in small portions.

Food Scrapbook

You can make several dishes with peels, stems and scraps

Citrus peels: Candy them, air-dry for spice blends, and infuse them into syrups.

Onion skins: Add to stock for colour and depth.

Potato & carrot peels: Roast into crisp snacks or grind into patties.

Watermelon rind: Cook into halwa or sauté for a Bengali sabzi.

Banana stems: Add to curries or stir-fries for soft crunch.

Coriander roots: Simmer into rasam, broths or chutneys.

Recipes / Quick Uses

Scrap stock: Freeze onion skins, carrot peels, coriander stems, cauliflower leaves; simmer for 45 minutes.

Fruit-peel vinegar:

Ferment apple or pear peels with sugar and water for a few weeks.

Citrus sugar/salt: Blitz dried zest with sugar or salt for desserts or salads.