What to do with your leftover and unopened CNY snacks

One of the best parts of the Chinese New Year celebrations has to be the delectable snacks. 

You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy munching on pineapple tarts and kueh bahulus. Yet somehow, empty snack containers tend to be equally hard to find as well.

With most Chinese New Year goodies having a short shelf life after they’re opened, there might seem like no other choice than to throw away everything that is left — especially when they tend to take up a ton of space in the kitchen. 

However, before you bin them, look to give your leftover and unopened snacks a new lease of life with these suggestions.

Although the preserved meat has a short shelf life even while refrigerated, bak kwa is thankfully one of the more versatile Chinese New Year snacks. They could be used to be the completing ingredient for fried rice, instant noodles and sandwiches or banh mi. 

They could also be mashed and minced to be part of a delicious fruit salad. 

Or you could even be adventurous and cross culinary borders with pasta and bak kwa.

A snack that has grown in popularity in recent years, salted egg fish skin is a staple dinner table favourite before making its way into convenient plastic packaging.

As such, they are natural accompaniments to staple food such as rice and noodles. However, do take note to enjoy in moderation as well, as the snack is by far the most fattening of all the Chinese New Year treats.

Whether they’re mouth-watering peanut cookies or aromatic butter varieties, they could be repurposed to accompany desserts as cookie crumbs. 

Simply place them into a ziplock bag and smash them into crumbs with a rolling pin or similarly heavy kitchen utensil — follow this link for a quick tutorial. 

Afterwards, the crumbs could be sprinkled into ice creams, yoghurts, and milkshakes. Similarly, for something challenging, you could try this tiramisu recipe made with leftover kueh bahulu.

Instead of cracking open your excess goodies for the repurposing projects above, you could also donate them to various organisations to spread festive joy.

The Food Bank Singapore is one such organisation that redistributes donated food to various food relief efforts such as community pantries, emergency food ration deliveries and daily meal programmes. 

You can drop off your excess, unopened, unexpired dry or packaged food items with at least four weeks to expiration in any of the Food Bank boxes at these locations. 

Other options include the Unmanned Free Food Pantry, a pop-up food pantry initiative that aims to provide a helping hand to low-income neighbourhoods, and Lions Home nursing homes. 

Contact the Unmanned Free Food Pantry and Lions Home at least one week in advance to make arrangements before heading down with your donations.