How to reduce your Christmas food waste

Brussels sprouts (like all brassicas) are rich in hydrogen sulfide gas. When heated, the gases escape, which is why over-boiled sprouts smell noxious. Reheating a mushy sprout will only make matters worse, so it’s important to respect your produce to begin with. Lightly steamed leftover sprouts can be cut in half and slicked in oil and aromatics (I like ground cumin) and roasted in a hot oven, stir-fried, or turned into delicious creamy soups. As long you add sprouts to the soup base at the last minute before blitzing, they’ll serve you well, but cooking them for too long can make them smell rather farty.

Shockingly, one in three of us admit to throwing away our turkeys before it even reaches the table. This is largely down to a lack of cooking confidence and a fear of causing food poisoning from an undercooked bird. The latest advice from the British Turkey Information Service is that for turkeys weighing over four kilos, you need to calculate twenty minutes per kilogram, plus ninety minutes. If the bird is under four kilograms, calculate twenty minutes per kilogram, plus seventy minutes. To test if it's done, make sure the juices run clear when you pierce the thigh where it meets the body; if not, put it back in the oven for another twenty minutes, before testing again. It is a good idea to invest in a meat probe to ease your mind – once the turkey reaches 70°C you can take it out of the oven to rest.

Buying just enough won’t cut it at this time of year – leftovers are all part of the joy of Christmas. But beware of extreme over-catering; this only leads to festive food fatigue before you’ve even got halfway through. Freezing leftovers can be a great way of reducing waste, but if the food’s leftover because you don’t actually like it in the first place, are you ever going to get round to defrosting?

Don’t let tradition dictate your tastebuds. There’s no reason to suffer a Christmas pudding if dried fruit would be your first entry into Room 101 at all other times of the year. To me, there are few pleasures as great as a proper Christmas pud and leftovers make fantastic bread and butter pudding, or crumbled into chocolate ganache to make petits fours. But if you don’t like it, make or buy something else instead. Why not borrow another country’s festive traditions that you find more enticing?

Rather than treating your table like the gateway to the bin, only buy food you and your family actually want to eat. After all, Christmas food is to be enjoyed, not endured. Reducing food waste won’t take the merry out of Christmas. In fact, doubters will be ho ho ho-ing on the other sides of their faces, once they see how much money you’ve saved come January. So, Merry Christmas! ‘Tis the season to shop wisely, eat excessively, and tart up your leftovers into food fit for the Three Kings.

To discover more exciting ways to reduce your food waste, Victoria’s latest book Too Good To Waste is full of ideas for waste-conscious cooks.