Recipes! Chicken Teriyaki, Blueberry Crumble Bars, Switchel and more

What to cook during the week ahead, from Post Food editors.

You can call it efficiency or laziness on my part, but I love it when a recipe is smart enough to have its ingredients pull double duty. Fewer things to buy and less waste? I'm in.

One of the best examples of this in our archives is Cheryl Day's Pecan, Chocolate and Espresso Coffee Cake, a longtime personal favorite. You start mixing together ingredients for the batter but then pull some out to form the crumb topping; the rest is used for the cake. Daniela Galarza's Peach Crumble Pie (who else is eagerly awaiting stone fruit season?) takes a similar approach, using one mixture to create the crust and the topping.

Ellie Krieger also has ingredients taking on two roles this week. The nut-oat mixture for her Blueberry Crumble Bars goes into the topping and, along with prunes and oil, the base. The filling uses fresh or frozen blueberries, so even if you don't have local berries available yet, you can still enjoy these squares now.

Now let's talk about Aaron Hutcherson's Chicken Teriyaki, that sweet, savory and salty siren song that I couldn't stop eating when he tested it in our Food Lab. To start, the chicken quickly marinates in a mixture of mirin, sake and soy sauce. Then after the chicken is seared, the marinade goes into the skillet to form a delectable, glossy sauce. Like I said, irresistible.

If you're interested in recipes that build off a few core ingredients but let you choose your own adventure, check out Allison Robicelli's Switchel. This old-fashioned, nonalcoholic thirst-quencher features fresh ginger and cider vinegar for sharp, refreshing flavor and brown sugar for sweetness. The main formulation employs molasses as the star ingredient, but we offer variations for peach and apple switchels, which were both up my alley.

As you're thinking about how else you can be someone who squeezes the most out of every ingredient (with fewer total ingredients), here are some additional examples:

Saute kale or Swiss chard stems along with your aromatics (onions, garlic, etc.) in recipes that call for the leaves.
Use the liquid from cooked beans in a soup or stew where you'd otherwise use water or broth.
Add the brine from quick-pickled onions to a salad dressing.
Save leaves removed from the celery for soup to use as a garnish.

How else can we help you be a smarter home cook? Join Aaron and me in our live weekly chat Wednesday at noon Eastern, when we offer up a variety of tips and answers customized to your specific questions. Submit them now, and come back to join us for the conversation.

Until next week, happy cooking!