Cooking Challenge
Turn Leftovers into Masterpieces!
Turn Leftovers into Masterpieces!
Show off your cooking skills while helping reduce wasted food. Join the challenge and create a sustainable dish using commonly wasted ingredients!
The Food Waste Prevention Week Cooking Challenge is an open call to share your waste-fighting kitchen victories, promote low-waste cooking and win prizes.
During the challenge window, anytime you make a dish that uses up what you have, finds a new use for an often pitched ingredient, or otherwise makes sure good food doesn’t go to waste, you can enter!
The dishes that most excite our judges will win $100 AND every entry will be entered into a raffle to win an additional $100. In prior years, winning dishes have ranged from a use-it-up egg dish made on the final morning in a vacation rental to an odds and ends layered meal inspired by an Indian street food snack.
New in 2026, we’ll have two tiers of the contest: one for those with specific culinary or sustainability expertise and another for folks who are simply eager to flex their food-waste-fighting muscles.
Entries will be scored based on
Versatility (ability to use random ingredients, etc.)
Using parts of the food that are often wasted (peels, stems)
Creativity
Appeal
Wild card – if your recipe does something special that excites us, we’ll award bonus points
In addition to the judge’s selections, we’ll select a raffle winner from all entries.
2. You may enter as many times as you want from Sept. 1 to Oct. 6.
3. Your creation may be based on an already published recipe or may be a product of your imagination, but you should explain how you tweaked a recipe to work with what you had .
4. You do not need to write out a formal recipe with specific ingredients or instructions–but if you want to, we won’t stop you! And you’ll get a bonus point.
What are the key dates?
How do i enter?
We’ll post a link to our submission form before the contest opens. Check back!
Recipes and dishes, even those that don’t win the top prizes, may be featured on the websites and social media accounts of Food Waste Prevention Week, and EatOrToss. We’re most likely to feature recipes with photos so, include those if you can!
Rachael is a food journalist and the founding editor of EatOrToss.com, an award-winning website that has helped millions of home cooks assess “questionable-looking” food. Rachael also promotes low-waste cooking and speaks on consumer food waste reduction to audiences ranging from Girl Scouts to government agencies. She contributes articles about food and sustainability to The Washington Post and serves on the planning committee of Food Waste Prevention Week. She’s excited to read about your food-waste-fighting adventures!
Barbara Martinez-Guerrero is the executive director of an environmental non-profit, Dream in Green, that integrates environmental sustainability lessons into South Florida schools. The organization runs the Green Schools Challenge Competition for K-12 grade students and focuses on themes such as energy efficiency, water conservation, waste management, and food security. Barbara is also a member of the Consortium for a Healthy Miami-Dade as well as the Miami Climate Alliance and is deeply committed to educating individuals on the links between health, preserving our natural resources, and climate change.
Gabrielle has had a knack for turning random fridge finds into something delicious since she was a kid. She brings hands-on experience across the food system, from working on organic farms and in low-waste kitchens to advancing sustainable food systems and wasted food prevention at the state level. Her contributions at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality were published in Reducing Food Impacts: A Strategic Plan for Oregon (2025). Gabrielle is also the founder of Food Waste Costs, a resource dedicated to outreach and education helping people understand the impact of wasted food on their wallets, community and the world.