h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is incredibly useful for storing all sorts of leftovers, especially liquid ones.

If you're making a recipe that needs egg yolks but no whites you can freeze the leftover whites in an ice cube tray and use them later for something like a meringue. Conversely, you can sort of do the same thing with the yolks if you're making meringues, but they're not too easy to get out of the tray.

If you have any lemons or limes that are getting past their shelf life, squeeze the juice, freeze it and put the cubes in a freezer bag. You can pull one or two out whenever you make a recipe that calls for citrus juice, or thaw out a few for your pancakes.

Got some drippings from roast chicken? Pour them into the ice cube tray, and when frozen separate the fat from the juice. The fat can be used for frying or basting, or it can be rendered down to make schmaltz, and you can use it when making pastry for a savoury pie to give the pie a little extra flavour.

The meat juice can be bagged and used in all sorts of ways. Toss a few into a soup or a stew for extra body and flavour, or use a handful with some leftover vegetables for a broth. If you want to make gravy but don't have any meat juices, melt a few chicken juice cubes in the pan, reduce them to almost nothing to develop some fried meat flavour and use that as the gravy base.

If you've made a roast or roasted/fried any kind of meat with bones in, keep the bones in a freezer bag for making stock (doesn't work with bones that have been stewed or casseroled). The stock, when made, can also be frozen in portions of a pint or half pint, ready for dropping into any stew or casserole. When making the stock you can also add a handful of the chicken (or whatever meat juices you froze) cubes to the stockpot to make the stock even tastier and full-bodied because there's already some gelatin in the drippings, to add the gelatin being extracted from the bones.

I forgot one very important thing.

When you fry meat you get those caramelised bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. That's called fond and it's the basis of French cuisine. If you throw that stuff away you're wasting one of the finest (and free) sources of flavour to be found in the kitchen.

If you don't use it immediately to make gravy to go with the meat you just fried, deglaze the pan with any liquid - doesn't have to be wine, water will do just as well if you don't have a bottle uncorked already. Beer works too. Scrape the bits off the bottom of the pan (this is one reason why non-stick pans aren't quite the boon they're made out to be) and cook over a low heat to dissolve them in the liquid.

Put it in a jar in the fridge or freeze it and you've got the classic French base for sauces and gravies on hand.

Great suggestions! You must have one giant sized freezer!