What Can I Do with Leftover Stale Cereal? Good Questions

Q: What can I do with old (stale) cereal? I always buy it at the grocery store thinking I'll eat it during the week, but invariably end up finding several boxes with less than a bowl's-worth left crowding my pantry.

Sent by Zack

Editor: Zack, a couple thoughts. First of all, if your leftover cereal is not very sweet — you know, things like corn flakes, wheaties, and Grape-Nuts — you can crush it and use it as breading for oven-baked chicken, or as a mix-in for homemade granola bars.

On the other hand, one way to make your cereal-buying more efficient is to look for a grocery store (co-op, Whole Foods...) that will let you buy your cereal from the bulk bins. You can take a jar and fill it up with just what you'll need for a week.

Reader, any thoughts for Zack?

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Comments (14)

If it's a 'plain' cereal like bran flakes, Corn Flakes, Grape Nuts, etc., make it into a topping for a fruit crumble with oats and other crumbly things. Once it's baked with some sugar & cinnamon, you won't notice the staleness.

If you keep it in an airtight container or seal the packet it's in, it shouldn't go stale for a good few weeks/months...

I use stale (sweet) cerial when baking. Either to make a streusel topping (replacing the flour and much of the sugar). This garbage cookie recipe works great with sweetened cereals; just remember to reduce the amount of sugar used.

Ice cream topping, breading for meats, pie crusts (like graham cracker crusts), mix in for a yogurt parfit.

you can toast stale cereal to get rid of some of the stale-ness (?) and make it edible as a cereal again. My thrifty mom also used to mix old boxes of cereal together to make more room in the cupboard. It drove me nuts as a child (kix + honey bunches of oats is not a great combo), but it's a really practical thing to do when you don't have quite enough cereal for a full bowl but you don't want to waste it.

@kris0218--Grape nuts as part of a fruit crumble topping sounds kinda awesome. If it weren't a million degrees where I am this weekend a fall-anticipating apple crumble would be in order....

If it's really stale, it will taste stale in anything you add it to and drag THAT down. I'm with Kanezo--feed the birds. Or throw out.

Feed it to a toddler. My husband and I don't eat cereal, but my 14 month old eats five cheerios a day and loves them. A box lasts us over a month and he doesn't care how stale they are :)

You could toss it into your smoothies. Might add some flavor minus dealing with the stale feeling.

We had some Cap n Crunch Crab Cakes from a food truck recently. Really good. They used the cereal as breadcrumbs, also as a breading. You could try adding the cereal as breadcrumbs to things.

Stir some of the crushed cereal into some melted chocolate and mold in a shallow pan, place some fleur de sel or some kosher salt on before it sets and then you have some yummy dessert. If you wanna gild the lily, you can add some nuts or dried fruit to it.
I made this with corn flakes and added crisp bacon bits and served it in a pool of creme anglais for my friend's birthday. He was happy.

There is a restaurant call Zelko Bistro in Houston that uses Cap'n Crunch to coat fried chicken before frying. It's fantastic!

Cap'n Crunch chicken is my brother's #1 dinner request from me when I visit. It is absolutely delicious and still works even if the cereal is a little stale. We never eat Cap'n Crunch so normally if I buy a box for the chicken, it will sit around for awhile until the next time. Still yum though!

You can use cornflake-type cereals, crushed (not too fine), on the outside of French toast: just place the crushed cereal on a plate, dip the bread into French toast custard, and then dip into crushed cereal. Cook like normal. It makes a really crunchy-yummy French toast :)