Video: Welcome back to Eating Trash With Claire, the Lifehacker series where I convince you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and delicious. In this episode, I show you how to transform strawberries that are just a bit past their prime into a sweet sauce, cocktail-friendly ice cubes and a delicious compound butter.

Tomato-based pasta sauce can either be incredibly simple or very involved. Whether you're making Marcella Hazan's three-ingredient sauce or a loaded-up bolognese, it's all about creating that perfect balance of flavours. Tasting, tweaking and tasting again is key, as is having a little lineup of extras you can toss in to bring that special something.

A big bowl of hot pasta, each strand perfectly coated in a creamy sauce, is perhaps the perfect comfort food. If you're not so hot on dairy - or it's not so hot on you - this meal may seem sadly out of your reach. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to make a rich and luscious, pasta-coating sauce without using a single drop of cream or a single pat of butter.

I am a very big fan of store-bought recess meals, both as a product and a concept. The no-cook, assemble-and-eat boxes of food are convenient, customisable, and fun for all, including actual school children and those who are just children at heart.

I am an equal opportunity macaroni eater. I like it baked. I like it made with a roux. I even like it out of the blue box. You may think the convenience of Kraft can't be beat, but you'd be wrong. This homemade recipe comes together in about 15 minutes, with only one pot (which you don't have to drain) and no roux.

I can't remember a Christmas dinner without a lasagna on the table. This is largely due, in part, to watery sauce with pasta and cheese sort of floating in it, but it's also just always been there (paired with an overcooked rib roast, of course). That meal, the last big holiday meal for many families, deserves better.

Gnocchi, if you haven't met them before now, are dumplings made from boiled potatoes, which are then formed into a dough of sorts, usually by adding flour and egg. Though more traditionally served as an appetizer, they have become a popular featured dish owing to their incredible versatility. Here's a delicious homemade recipe suitable for the laziest of chefs.

When I first started cooking for myself and others, I considered a steak dinner to be the epitome of sophisticated adult-ness, especially when served with an aggressively tannic bottle of red wine. I wasn't bad at making the meal, but one element always eluded me: The freaking pan sauce.

Marinara and other tomato based pasta sauces aren't too difficult to make on your own, but sometimes you don't have the time. This super simple trick can make a jar of the store-bought stuff taste like you've been working on it all day.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to a particularly gooey episode of Will It Sous Vide?, the column where I conduct food experiments with my immersion circulator.

The best homemade pizza is made with the best ingredients, but that doesn't mean those ingredients need to be complicated. In fact, the best pizza sauce has only one ingredient and it requires no cooking at all.

Thin, watery sauces are just plain unappealing, but they aren't quite the disaster they seem. To thicken up as sad sauce, you just need butter, cornstarch and time.

Store bought barbecue sauce is often packed with sugar, making it far too sweet for some palates. A dash of soy sauce can fix that.

If you want to peel a few tomatoes for a homemade sauce or batch of gazpacho, all you need is an open flame and those tomato skins will come off in no time.

Starchy pasta water is often incorporated into sauce to silk-ify the texture and help it stick to the spaghetti. The more starch, the creamier the sauce. You can use this principle to take your plate of pasta to a dreamier place, and "super starch" it by adding a handful of semolina flour to the cooking water.

Beer can cabbage is a delicious beer-steamed entree that's perfect for winter barbecues. It's a great option for your veggie friends, but it's also just a really tasty way to cook cabbage.

A perfectly-cooked poached or fried egg is fantastic on pretty much anything -- from ramen to burgers -- but, be honest, you're mostly just in it for the yolk. You could cook individual eggs to that perfect, runny-yolk stage, or you could make this yolk sauce from Cook's Science and use it all week.

One should always have a bag of chickpeas in their cabinet for impromptu hummus or quick meat-free meal, but you can also use the mighty garbanzo to make a rich and creamy pasta sauce.

Some folks will tell you that "special sauce" is just mayonnaise and tomato sauce, but there's a little more to it than that. The right mix of basic ingredients and a few surprising spices will make your homemade burgers more mouthwatering than ever.