You take leftovers home hoping to recapture the delicious culinary experience you enjoyed at the restaurant, but more often than not, you reheat a soggy mess that's a shell of its former greatness. It doesn't have to be that way. Here are a few reheating tricks that'll deliver leftovers that taste as good as the first time around.


Photo by Andrea Nguyen.

The biggest step you can make to ensuring your leftovers last a long time is to follow our guidelines for food storage, which includes tips for picking out the right type of packaging, safely handling your food, and choosing between the freezer and the fridge. But what about all the meals you've already cooked? Let's take a look at the expected time limits on your leftovers and the best practices for storing them.


How Long Common Leftovers Keep For

A good general rule of thumb to follow is that most cooked foods should last four days when stored in an airtight container in the fridge within two hours of being cooked. It's also worth noting that the smell test isn't always and accurate way to tell if your leftovers go bad, so if you're ever in doubt, throw it away. Mark your containers with a pen and the date it was cooked instead of relying completely on your sense of smell.

That said, the four-day rule isn't universal and a few common leftovers won't usually make it all the way to four days. Cooked chicken and ground beef will only last three days, sandwiches with mayonnaise won't even make it a day, and most pasta with sauce can only make it two days. If you're wondering about the best practices for storage and shelf life, StillTasty is a webabb that breaks everything down in an easily searchable manner. As a general rule, you want to put food in a sealed container in the fridge and don't expect it to last too long. Freezing foods can make them last indefinitely and you can usually get away with storing leftovers in aluminum foil, plastic wrap, or butcher's paper in the freezer.


A few more good habits include:

Keep your refrigerator temperature below 40 degrees to slow bacteria growth.

Spread leftovers evenly in the container so the cold air hits the food evenly.

Leave space between the items in the fridge so the cold air can circulate.

Keep leftovers in the front of the fridge to prevent forgetting about them.

But good storage doesn't mean a thing if you can't reheat those leftovers in a way that captures the taste of the original meal, so let's look at some good reheating practices.


Photo by Andrew Nash.

Clever Ways to Reheat Leftovers to Make Them Taste Just as Good as the First Time


While we often think of leftovers as not tasting as good as the original, quite a few ways exist to restore your leftovers to their former glory. In fact, if you cook with lots of spices, onions, garlic, or peppers, your leftovers can get better over time. Taste is just part of the battle, reheating can dry foods out or make them soggy, neither of which are enjoyable to stuff down your throat. Here are a few of our favorite tips for keeping food appetizing on all fronts.

Reheat with a damp paper towel: If you're microwaving foods to reheat them, you can either mix in a little water, or wet a paper towel and place it over the leftovers. This creates a little steam cooking to go along with your reheating and keeps the food from drying out any more than it already has. You can use this to your advantage with all types of foods. For instance, if you're reheating rice, microwaving it with a small mug filled with water will help rehydrate the rice. If you're reheating turkey, placing a damp paper napkin over it will moisten it up and make it taste as good as when you cut it off the bird.


Reheat pizza in a skillet for crispy crust: If you hate soggy pizza, an easy way to reheat a leftover slice is to do it on a skillet with an aluminum foil lid. The lid captures the heat and spits it back at the toppings while the skillet uses the residual oil left in the crust to reheat it without making it all floppy and sad. The result is a crispy slice of pizza that doesn't taste like it's been sitting in a cardboard box in the fridge for two days.


Use a microwave to restore stale chips: As if its part of some vast conspiracy, the amount of chips in a bag is never equal to the amount of salsa you make or buy. It seems like there's always leftover chips sitting around. It turns out, the same method that wrecks havoc on pizza, works wonders on chips because it dries them out and removes the moisture stored up.


Reheat turkey in a steamer basket: Turkey is one of the more infamous examples of a leftover that dries out quickly, but if you reheat the inside a steamer basket if keeps the turkey nice and juicy. It's a bit complicated for your run-of-the-mill leftovers, but it'll likely work well if you're planning on dishing out a full meal and not just a quick lunch.


Reheat pasta and rice by sautéing it: Two foods that seem to lose their flavor and consistency quickly are rice and pasta. It turns out, if you sauté with a little olive oil, it makes them both taste good and feel right on your tongue when you're shoving them down your mouth.


Photo by peapodsquadmom.

Do you have any tricks you use to make leftovers taste good? Share them in the comments.