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Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
6 Min
27/02/2026
Why do celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay advocate for using every part of the animal? Or Jamie Oliver keeps harping on reducing food waste? Because it matters. It’s 2026, and this should be common knowledge especial during the festive period of Holi, when food waste increases significantly. The trick lies in knowing your crowd, picking mindfully and turning scraps into special food for Holi.
Forget International chefs dominating social media feeds and come home to Indian chefs, like Ranveer Brar, who has been saying this for years - reduce wastage. And yet, every Holi, Indians happily chuck out watermelon rinds, coriander stalks, and beetroot tops as if they can amount to nothing but waste. Turns out, they're the most useful things on the plate. In fact, some are already used for decades, like vegetable peels going into parathas instead of compost, bottle gourd skins becoming thogayals, and watermelon rinds cooked into thick gravies, dosas or pickles instead of being discarded. Read ahead to dig deeper into the world of root-to-stem cooking in Indian kitchens.
Watermelon rind curry, known in Hindi as tarbooz ke chilke ki sabji, is a speciality dish from Rajasthan. In Gujarat, it's called kalingar nu shaak (made from the white part of the watermelon rind) and is a traditional curry with a long history. Treat the white part or pith like a squash. It’ll absorb spice well, hold its texture, and won’t fall apart.
The key is scrape out the last bits of the red flesh of the fruit, so the curry doesn't turn sweet, then cooking it down with turmeric, garam masala, and a tempering of cumin and mustard seeds. Serve it with roti or rice for a no-waste Holi celebration food.
Most households use beetroot for Holi sweets, but bin the stalks and leaves. That's a mistake of epic proportions. Beet juice produces a vivid, deep red shade that works for frostings, doughs, and batters. If you want green, spinach, blended with a little water, produces a nice shade. If you want orange, use orange peels and for yellow, turmeric water.
Target sweet and salty dough-based foods like gujiyas and momos, respectively, and turn them into rainbow dumplings, with a coloured dye made from vegetable scraps. Spinach contains chlorophyll, which works best in recipes that don't require long cooking times, so it's ideal for dumpling wrappers.
Coriander stems might not be kitchen waste for many, but a few “purists” prefer to only use the leafy bits. However, you can use the stems for a special food for Holi. The coriander stalks also carry intense flavour and thus make amazing chutneys, which are the perfect accompaniment for hot samosas and pakoras. In Gujarat homes, they are used to add flavour to dals.
Banana peels are used in Jain cooking, and much of their use is linked to Rajasthan's Mewar region, where resourceful cooks discovered that properly prepared banana peels (raw, not ripe ones) deliver surprising results. In Kerala, raw banana peels are chopped and stir-fried with coconut, green chillies, and curry leaves to create a dry dish served alongside rice. To turn banana peels into special food for Holi, consider snacks like bhajiyasm thandai and chaats, where the banana peels can be used.
To handle ridgegourd peel might take a little getting used to, given its vegetal taste and texture. But the South have got it quite right, adding it to stir fries and turning the peels into chutneys. There’s the Andhra-style beerakaya thokku pachadi, which is a spicy chutney made with sauteed peels, green chillies, and tamarind, often featuring sesame seeds or peanuts and the Tamil-style peerkangai thol thogayal, a thick, coarse chutney cooked with urad dal, coconut, and tamarind, and served with steamed rice and ghee.
In Rajasthan, watermelon seeds are ground into pastes and added to gravies to give them a creamy texture. Pumpkin seeds are roasted and salted as snacks in North India. For a Holi meal where watermelon is already on the table, the seeds can be dried, roasted, and used immediately – either as a topping or blended into a nut-free gravy base.
If you run out of ideas or are too tired to create special food for Holi by using ingredients that are normally discarded, then there’s this easy option. Before Holi cooking begins, collect the week's edible bits from cauliflower stalks, tomato tops, green bean ends, dehydrated garlic, and clean vegetable peels. Put them into a pot of water, bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour. Strain after cooling for a ready-to-use vegetable stock and use it as the base for gravies instead of plain water.
Holi already celebrates natural colour with scraps as mentioned above, but you can add flowers and fruits that are in season during Holi celebrations. Marigold, turmeric powder, gram flour, pomegranate peels, and beetroot are all traditionally used to make organic colours at home.
The same marigold petals used in rangolis can go into rice or be steeped for a yellow infusion in thandai. Pomegranate peel, usually tossed, can be dried and powdered for both a natural dye and a digestive spice mix.
The zero-waste kitchen isn't about being pretentious and performative. Earlier generations in India already valued every part of an ingredient, and spring offers a lot of potential when it comes to scraps, stems and peels. Reviving old habits during Holi, when quantities are largest, and waste is most visible, is the most practical place to start.
