A big ol’ pot of beans, simmered in a flavorful liquid, is a pretty solid building block for any sort of meal plan. Beans are filling and cheap, but no matter how much you like a particular legume, bean fatigue can start to set in after your third bowl. But there’s a very easy way to spruce up your next bowl of beans—just treat them like pasta.

Prawn is a food that doesn’t need a lot of fussing, but sometimes it’s fun to get saucy with it, especially if that sauce is of the sticky, sweet and sour variety. Surprisingly, kombucha works very well here, both as a marinade and as the base for your sauce.

Barbecue sauce is such a polarising condiment. Just as with the act of barbecuing, variations in style across the country can lead to heated arguments, scathing polemics, and outright ad hominem attacks. But, similar to pizza, I don’t really have any loyalty to one style or another. I like it all. One thing I cannot abide, however, is a cloying, one-note sauce.

People tend to associate pasta sauce with a lot of simmering, seasoning and tasting, but not all sauces need to be heavy on the labour, even if it is a labour of love. If you start with a super flavourful ingredient — such as roasted garlic — you barely have to do anything.

A half-consumed can of jellied cranberry sauce is kind of a sad sight, but there's no reason to toss this tart and sweet substance, even if you're eaten every last bit of turkey.

People lose their minds for ramps, and I get it. They are a very good vegetable, and the limited-time-only nature of the allium drives their appeal. But those things are expensive. Do not misunderstand me: I am very excited to eat the ramps in my fridge.

However, the real garlicky, oniony, vibrant-hued, cost-effective MVP is green garlic.

The biggest highlight from my trip to Copenhagen was getting to shoot a video on the farm and in the kitchen of Restaurant Relae, an establishment that is more than a little focused on sustainability. I learned many things (that you will also learn in the forthcoming video), including how to make a silky, crazy flavorful, incidentally vegan sauce out of root vegetables and vinegar.

I have never understood the point of canned, chopped tomatoes. They rarely taste as good as their whole, peeled brethren, and they never break down fully while cooking, keeping their cube-like shape long after all other ingredients have turned to mush.

There are so many good jams, jellies, and preserved fruit spreads in this world, it can be easy to accumulate quite a collection. (At any given time, I have three to five Bonne Maman jars in my fridge.)

Though these fruity beauties are perfect on nothing more than good bread, they can also be used to make a bomb (bonne?) glaze for roasted meats.

Australia is about to hit barbeque season - which hopefully means there will be plenty of ribs in your immediate future. If you want to give your BBQ ribs some extra pizzazz this year, avoid cheap BBQ sauce. Instead, make your own badass 'Blue-B-Q sauce' from blueberries and whack those ribs in the oven. Here's the recipe!

It seems that, in an attempt to rebrand mayonnaise, various hip food establishments insist on calling all sorts of creamy condiments “aioli”. I refuse to stand idly by, letting this go unchecked. Aioli is not, as some would have you believe “fancy mayo”. Aioli is its own, very specific thing, and it is amazing.

I rarely cook something the same way twice. This is especially true with pasta sauce, as it is adaptable by nature. The other night I was making a simple spaghetti dinner for myself and a friend, simply because I had found a can of tomatoes I didn’t know I had.

As I was tasting and tweaking, I remembered I had about half a cup of the spicy, nduja-like spread I'd made earlier in the week. I tossed it in the sauce and, after tasting, rejoiced.

Tomatoes have a window of ripeness rivaled only by avocados, which is problematic if you tend to buy in bulk. It helps to have a “use ‘em all up real quick” backup plan - which is where this recipe comes in.

Control over your ingredients gives you control over the final dish, and squeeze bottles can help you become the master of your culinary domain. With them, you can put the exact amount of a liquid ingredient precisely where you want it, and they're super cheap.

Usually, when I think of blueberries, I think of muffins, pie and Blueberry Morning - a cereal I was obsessed with from ages nine through 12. These are all good things, but I urge you to reconsider the blueberry, and smother steaks, chops and wild game with this juicy, surprisingly balanced pan sauce.

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.