About three years ago, Frankie Celenza says he ran out of ideas.
The Emmy Award-winning chef had just completed nine back-to-back seasons of his popular Tastemade show “Struggle Meals” — a concept that was born out of his time as a student at NYU, hoping to teach other students how to eat and cook well while living on a budget — and says he didn’t know where to take the show next. The well of inspiration had run dry; a problem he sees with many food creators in the era of fast-paced social media and instant gratification.
“It seems like the really big food creators were doing recipes, and now they’ve run out of recipes and they’re doing other stuff,” says Celenza.
He notes that’s not necessarily a bad thing (he ran out of ideas, too), but he views “Struggle Meals” as his “life’s work,” and he wasn’t going to give up completely for a case of writer’s block.
“Everyone’s struggle is relative,” he says, “When I started this, I was in my 20s. It was definitely financial, and I had all the time in the world. Now that I’m about to be 40 in less than one month, I don’t have so much time, and I still want to save money, but it’s not the primary driver anymore.”
Now, he’s back with a renewed vision for what “Struggle Meals” can teach people. The show still cares about cooking on a budget, but Celenza’s definition of “struggle” has expanded. This season is less about surviving on a student budget and more about helping home cooks waste less, improvise more and look at what’s already in the fridge or pantry with confidence.
“I think a break was a good thing,” says Celenza, “A 1,142-day reset certainly gave me plenty of ability to get out there and have great, fun new things to share with everyone.”
The new season, which drops weekly on the Tastemade YouTube channel, takes viewers back to the basics, helping them create scratch staples at home and demystifying some of the most intimidating aspects of home cooking. For Celenza, that approach is a recommitment to what made Struggle Meals work in the first place: practical, approachable recipes that taste good and reduce kitchen anxiety. Making something from scratch doesn’t mean it has to take hours, and you don’t need a culinary degree to come up with your own dinner recipe.
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In the age of social media and constantly shifting micro-food-trends, people don’t seem to have a problem with buying new ingredients. But we’ve all been in that situation where you buy something specifically for a recipe and have no clue what to do with the leftovers.
I’ll admit it: half my pantry is made up of those one-time ingredients.
According to the USDA, more than 30% of the food supply in the U.S. gets thrown out at both the retail and consumer level. That’s over $160 billion dollars worth of food. Celenza says Struggle Meals is made to combat exactly that.
Even if he doesn’t cover the specific ingredient you have, Celenza hopes his recipes and tips inspire people to get more creative in the kitchen.
The first episode, which dropped earlier this month, teaches viewers how to make homemade mayo and hot sauce. In the episode, Celenza uses the two for a breakfast sandwich, but mayo and hot sauce can be used in a multitude of meals: sandwiches, salads, marinades, hamburgers, tacos… do I need to keep going?
“If you’re just going on the internet and searching for a recipe, you’re gonna buy overage. You can’t just buy three leaves of parsley, you’re gonna get a bunch, and now you have 95% of this parsley you gotta figure out what to do with,” says Celenza.
“If you cook along with me the idea is that, ‘Hey, I’m putting something in the freezer, you should too.’ And in a month, guess what, it’s there, and you’re gonna be like, ‘Holy smokes, I have it.’”
Celenza says that “the best, most resourceful” home cooks are the ones that are willing to improvise. It’s a hard skill to teach, but he hopes this new season of “Struggle Meals” inspires people to use their leftover ingredients in interesting and creative ways.
“If you watch the show, I am literally giving six different directions you can go in every step,” he says, “I don’t want you to think you can only take Main Street to get to 34th street. There are other ways to get there.”
In one upcoming episode, Celenza focuses on dried beans and teaches three different ways to not only cook but also preserve and reuse those beans for the future.
“Imagine you have three pounds of beans and you just ate it as that, you’d get pretty bored of it by the seventh time, which is exactly why I’m here,” says Celenza, “These three categories all have different textures and vehicles for feeding you. You can have a totally different flavor profile that you can customize to your own, so now when you open the fridge and see beans you don’t go, ‘Ugh beans again.’”
Since 2022, food prices have jumped nearly 20%. This year alone, the USDA reports that food-at-home prices are up nearly 3% from last year. In many American homes, every dollar counts. And looking at the numbers, one of the easiest ways to stretch your budget is finding ways to reduce your food waste.
Leftover ingredients don’t have to rot in your fridge, they’re opportunities to get creative and expand your kitchen prowess.
“It’s an opportunity to dress it up and make it something else,” says Celenza, “I’ve said it 50 million times, but it is a blank canvas upon which you can paint your picture.” He says that last bit with a medieval, fairytale-type accent.
Whenever Celenza has a leftover vegetable, his go-to is usually a frittata or a stir fry. But certain ingredients, like leftover olives, can get thrown into pasta.
“If I have leftover olives from making a bunch of martinis, I can crack open a can of tuna and some tomato paste and I’m halfway to a puttanesca. Very happy about that,” he says.
We both agreed that one of the most forgotten about kitchen hacks is making your own broths and stocks.
I made my first stock after Thanksgiving, when my mom threw a turkey carcass at me and said, “Use this.” A few hours later, the bones had become weeks of soup — proof that one of the most intimidating “scratch staples” is mostly just time, heat and scraps.
If you don’t have enough bones, Celenza says you can always do a 50/50 fortified stock using bouillon or even a flavor packet from ramen to round out the meaty flavor. The trick is not to salt the stock at all, he says. Because then it’s easier to reduce. You can freeze the concentrate then reconstitute it with water for even longer lasting product.
Spring savings are here!
Celenza’s other trick is trying to eat “in season.” Grocery stores and farms follow the same basic principles of supply and demand as any other business. When things are in season, there’s a lot of supply and the price might be lower.
“If you can eat in season, you’ll eat the freshest, most nutrient-dense food, and you’ll get it for the lowest cost,” says Celenza, “Then it becomes, how do you use it all up so that you’re not wasting any money? How do you get creative and make five different asparagus dishes and not get sick of asparagus?”
We all want to reduce waste. We want to eat high quality food without breaking the bank. But sometimes, making that conscious switch can sound a lot easier than it is in practice. Celenza says the only way to get over that initial hesitation is to just start.
“You will not be able to run it if you don’t do it. So, you know, how can you get to this point where you immediately know what to do with leftover ingredients? And the answer is, you got to cook,” says Celenza, “You got to make mistakes. You got to have a couple things that are not delicious. It’s the only way to get there. I can help you get there faster.”
Celenza says that some of his tips and tricks have actually come from conversations with fans and viewers of the show. He says people come up to him all the time with their suggestions, from the streets of New York City to fish counters in Danbury, CT.
“When people write in or watch the show or comment, I’m not offended if they have a better way. Often they do,” he says, “I’m not looking at myself as some like higher being that everyone should listen to. I’m literally trying to be the voice of everybody.”
That may be why “Struggle Meals” still has legs. Although Celenza hopes to continue spreading the message that eating healthy and high quality doesn’t have to come with a huge price tag, the struggle was never only about being broke in a dorm kitchen.
“I’m hoping that the audience is growing with me through this thing,” he says, “This is a show for people that are struggling in the realest sense of the word, but also struggling to find time to cook, or struggling to lower the cost overall that they spend on food for their family, or struggling to get their kids, who are picky eaters, to eat something… That will be my life’s work. It already is and will continue to be.”
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