You might be moving like we are, or maybe you just want to clean out your fridge to make more room, but dealing with a refrigerator of half-filled condiment bottles can feel a little overwhelming. Sure it's nice to have things on hand that lend flavor, but putting the sea of half-used bottles to use can seem daunting. Clean the condiment clutter with these 10 easy ideas!
10 Ways To Use Up Condiments
1. Turn Them Into Dips: You can make a dip out of most any condiment by adding the leftovers in your bottle to a tub of sour cream, cream cheese or yogurt. Don't forget a squeeze of lemon or lime to help meld the two together.
2. Pasta and Potato Salads: Even though it's easy to think of both these things being strictly mayo or mustard based, many condiments can be mixed in to give it a unique taste that's sure to be a show stopper at your next family picnic.
3. Marinades: With grilling season in full swing, putting non-milk based condiments in a zip top bag with your proteins can be a great way to use up the end of a bottle. The only thing to keep an eye on is the amount of sugar you'll be using (which can cause burning or grill flare ups). If it's higher on the scale, use a low heat and cook things a little slower.
4. Salad Dressings: Although many of the condiments in your fridge might already be dressings, an easy way to get rid of more obscure things (like a bottle of plum or duck sauce) can be to mix it up with a little oil and vinegar and create a brand new concoction. Don't be scared to give something new a try, the worst that can happen is that it sucks, you have a laugh and life goes on.
5. Hand Pies and Calzones: One of our favorite ways to use up the tail ends of stray proteins in the fridge is making small hand pies or "calzones". Make a little dough, add a few other pantry staples and use it as a nice change to a more traditional marinara.
6. Pizza Sauce: You can't talk about the mini version above and not go full out. Instead of using pesto, marinara or just olive oil, try adding a little funk to your pie and spread on something fun. Make a dessert pizza using apple butter as the base, a Asian style pie by using up a bottle of duck sauce, the world is your condiment/pizza oyster!
7. Freeze Them: Some condiments (not oil based) will freeze quite well and can be a good option. Try using a small candy mold sprayed with quick release spray to freeze small individual portions, allowing you to pull out a teaspoon of worcestershire when you need it and add it to your hot pan.
8. Pick A Starch, Any Starch: Adding flavors from your fridge to pasta or rice dishes is a great way to polish off a bottle. Try adding them when stir frying or pan frying at the last minute for a good zip of flavor!
9. Sandwiches: Although this idea tops off the more obvious end of the scale, try using things other than mayo, mustard and horseradish!
10. Add 'em to Eggs!: It doesn't matter if you're making a frittata or scrambling them up, a few teaspoons of this or that is always acceptable in the blank slate egg dish. They're forgiving to all types of condiments and can be used in combination with almost everything in your fridge!
Do you have a way that's not listed above? Let us know below!
• Related: Reader Tip: Organize Your Fridge with Six-Packs
(Image: Flickr member rkelland licensed for use by Creative Commons)
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I love making salad dressings out of old bottles of peanut sauce. Best dressing I've ever eaten. :-D
If it's a jelly-like condiment, you can put half a cup to a cup of it in a standard muffin recipe, to the benefit of the muffins.
Fruit butters and curds should also work as partial fat or sugar substitutes in baking.
Usually my half empty condiments are too old to be edible. I like the jam suggestions, though.
I think the most important part about this post is seeing that giant bottle of Rose's on the door in the picture. I had NO IDEA they made bottles that big! That would make gimlet night so much easier! Our friends have been on a gimlet kick this summer, and I think we've gone through at least 100 of those small bottles.
Mustard, the dregs, add vinegar and oil, shake and it's instant salad dressing.
I like to flavor turkey meatballs with left over condiments. It's a great way to use up of those pesky jars of whatever is on hand - pesto, salsa, soy sauce, etc...
Resist buying warehouse club sizes. Soy sauce, ketchup and mustard sit out on restaurant tables for long lengths of time. Do you really need to store in the fridge at all? Who has ever heard of putting worcestershire in the fridge, let alone [attempting] to freeze it? The bottle does not indicate refrigeration. Most condiments have ridiculously long freshness ranges. Why clean the fridge out of them at all?
I have an old cookbook with a recipe for "Fridge Door Barbeque Sauce". Can't find the book right now, but you divide the contents of the door into vinegars, ketchup-like items, and use the ratio in the book. I've made it twice with great results.
Having just moved myself, the first thing you should really look at is what's expired or how long it's been since you've used something. I know, this sounds like a no-brainer. However, I was really surprised by how many items I thought were still perfectly good but were way past the use-by date. Since I was moving, anything that was past the date was not going to be making the trip. It cut down on the fridge clutter severely and it made moving into a new fridge much more refreshing.
For everything else, we used the "do we like/use this enough to want to physically transport it?" rule of thumb.
Looks like my fridge! I gave myself food poisoning (shudder, it was horriffic, surely thought I would die) a long time ago from a condiment in my very own fridge. Since then I have
"Sharpied" the date on every lid, every time. Month/year on long terms like dressings, day/month on short terms like salsa or guac. Somethings are ok to slide on, others definately not.
That said, the rest of any mustard mixed with the rest of any jelly or jam is a fun BBQ sauce, like an earlier commenter said: watch the sugar-to-temperature ratio!
Have you actually attempted to freeze worcestershire sauce? Between the high salt and vinegar content, I can't imagine it freezing at the temperatures most residential freezers can achieve. And besides, the stuff has an indefinite shelf life when refrigerated. Probably when left at room temperature, as well. So why would anyone be in a hurry to "use it up"?
Great ideas-thanks!
Re. freezing condiments, why "not oil based"? Based on how well pesto freezes, I would think other oil-based things would freeze very well (better, actually, than the vinegary stuff...).
Here's the best trick: leave shelf stable staples... on the shelves. There, that was easy. Insta!Declutter.
I just burst out laughing at the "put mustard on your sandwich" tip.
Soy sauce and fish sauce do not need refrigeration. Growing up in an Asian household, most of our condiments are left on the counter perfectly fine.