Nothing hits quite like a nice, cold drink on a hot summer day. The clinking of ice in a glass. The condensation building just enough to cool you from the outside-in. The sharpness of a perfect lemon wedge. It can’t possibly be more satisfying. Unless! Unless that tasty beverage is also helping you reduce your home’s food waste.
Not to harsh the vibes, but U.S. households chuck a lot of food—much if which is still edible. And all that excess festering in landfills adds up to a big climate problem. “Drinks are such an easy and fun and approachable way to eliminate waste,” says Danny Childs, author of the James Beard Award–winning Slow Drinks, which focuses on turning botanicals into beverages.
Cocktails, boozy or not, are a great way to use everything from rapidly overripening peaches to the trimmings you might otherwise toss. “It doesn’t matter what the raw ingredients look like—no one is gonna know when it’s in liquid form,” Childs says. “If it’s bruised or blemished you can still use it to make a drink.”
In fact, using up seemingly inedible bits can also open up new flavor profiles. An ingredient that might otherwise seem unappetizing can, with very little effort, morph into the main element of a knock-out cocktail, adds Kelsey Ramage, who runs Trash Collective, a consultancy that helps bartenders learn how to make use of what they might otherwise throw out.
We asked Ramage and Childs to share their favorite must-know techniques for turning food trash into cocktail gold. The best part? It’s easier than you think. “People need to be less afraid of making cocktail ingredients at home,” Ramage jokes, “It ends up being quite funny: They’ll cook all kinds of things but are afraid of making a simple syrup.” So collect those summer fruit scraps, and fill the ice bucket: It's cocktail time.
Punch up your simple syrup with scraps
A simple syrup—a one-to-one ratio of water and sugar, stirred until dissolved—is a base ingredient for countless cocktails. It’s also incredibly easy infuse it with flavor from peels, skins, and other fruit and vegetable scraps: Just dissolve sugar into water and leave whatever you’ve got in there to steep overnight. Extra herbs and stems, citrus peels, and mango skins work incredibly well. You can even use cherry or stone fruit pits. One of Ramage’s go-tos is a syrup infused with avocado pits, which results in a nutty mixer that you can use like orgeat—an almond syrup common in tiki drinks like a mai tai, an Army & Navy, and even some pina colada variations.
Whip up a ‘bachelor’s jam’
An old-school technique from Germany and France, “bachelor’s jam” or “old boys jam” is a simple way to add some oomph to past-its-prime fruit, and it’s one of Childs’s favorites. The recipe doesn’t require much but a little patience: Take fruit, add some sugar, and dump rum or another spirit (often cognac or brandy) on top of it. You can drink it right away, but it’s best it you let it hang out for a few months—and it’ll be even more delicious at Christmas. Use it as a mixer or just make a simple highball by topping it with some sparkling water.
Make a cordial from melon rinds
This one’s best for a party when you’re planning to serve up tons of the same drink—like, may we suggest, a watermelon margarita. Watermelon rind cordial is a pretty-hands off enterprise: Cover chopped rinds with sugar in a sealed vessel (like one of these silicone food-storage bags) and stick the mixture in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours. Ramage does warn that this one can get separate rather quickly, so only make it if you’ve got a plan to use it within a day.
Get your shrub on
Tart, sweet, and refreshing, a shrub (aka a drinking vinegar) can be made from just about anything, including extra fruit and veggies, and the remaining bits of herbs and spices. If you’ve got a bit or bob laying around and ask yourself, will it shrub? The answer is probably “yes!” “I make a lot of shrubs when I’m faced with extreme bounty,” Childs says, “they’re complex and interesting.” Equal parts fruit, vinegar, and sugar, a shrub can come together in a bowl on the counter in a day or two—or faster if you’re willing to turn on the stove. Top the finished product off with some soda, an optional bit of your spirit of choice, and put your feet up. The puckering beverage is also great over ice cream.
Use almost-empty jam jars as cocktail mixers
This one’s less about using up summer fruit as it is getting every last bit of yumminess out of the damned jar. Rather than rinse the last teaspoon or two of preserves down the drain, toss in some ice, booze, and herbs, pop on the lid, and give it a shake. It’s a quickie cocktail with zero extra dishes or bartending accessories to clean up after. Our favorite is a basil-gin smash with some berry jam, but whiskey with peach or apricot, or tequila with anything citrusy are also perfect pairs. (This technique also works for salad dressings).
Dehydrate citrus for a colorful garnish
Got tempted by a sale and brought home a sack ofl lemons, limes, oranges, or grapefruit when you only needed one? We get it. Supposing someone can get tired of lemonade (let us know when you meet them!), you can easily transform them into a colorful garnish that will last all year long. Just pop ‘em in a food dehydrator or, if you don’t have one, set the oven to its lowest possible temperature and let ‘em roast for anywhere from 4 to 7 hours, depending on the fruit. Don’t want to heat up the house? This will also work in the air fryer in around 4 hours.
