Cooking with what is no longer perfect

There comes a moment when ingredients are no longer at their ideal point, yet remain perfectly usable. Fruit is no longer firm, vegetables have lost their initial texture, herbs are not at their best. But they are not spoiled — they are simply outside the standard we often use, without thinking, to decide what deserves to be cooked or not.

Many recipes are built on the assumption of perfect ingredients: the right texture, maximum freshness, an impeccable appearance. When that fails, the problem is rarely the food itself, but the recipe. Instead of adapting it, we give up on it, and that is how many ingredients end up forgotten in the fridge.

Cooking with what is no longer perfect requires changing the starting point. Less attention to the original texture, more focus on the final result. Dishes where ingredients are transformed, cooked slowly or integrated into a common base tend to work better than recipes that depend on crunch, extreme freshness or flawless presentation.

Where imperfect ingredients work best. When texture no longer helps, transformation solves the problem. In practice, these ingredients fit better into dishes where the original form is no longer central:

• Stews, braises and one-pot dishes

• Thicker, creamier soups

• Sauces, fillings and blended bases

• Preparations where everything cooks together and gains depth

Soft vegetables rarely work well raw, but release more flavour when cooked. Very ripe fruit may no longer be appealing on its own, but still works well in quick jams, purées, cakes or sauces. What changes is not the ingredient, but the type of recipe.

This kind of cooking does not call for extra creativity or complicated recipes. It calls for simple, flexible structures that allow variation and do not depend on absolute precision. A solid base does more than trying to rescue each ingredient individually.

When you cook this way, the question shifts from “what do I do with this?” to “what kind of dish does this work best in?”. It is a subtle change, but one that has a real impact on how we use what we already have at home. Cooking with what is no longer perfect is not a plan B. It is a more practical, less rigid and more realistic way of cooking day to day.