minced beef and tatties, screw the tomatos

Right, go look at recipes that use minced beef...read the ingredients...

Yes, get some minced beef (AKA 'ground beef' for our American buddies), add onions, add tomatos... and it's all the bloody same. At one site (http://www.cookitsimply.com/category-0020-0i50.html) you get the joy of reading 17, yes 17 recipes before you get to one WITHOUT onions and tomato...but you can understand the reason for this drop in creative powers. Beef, onions and tomato taste good, and are in virtually everyones larder. So why think of alternatives?

Well, mostly because the food always tastes the same. Anyway, this recipe avoids tomatoes, so is a "Good Thing"(tm)

So this is phase one of emptying the freezer. I have 20 kilos of minced beef, and it all got to go. The recipe below contains freezer elements marked with a "*".

Minced beef and tatties
500g of minced beef *
2 medium onions
3 cloves of garlic
a ton of Oregano *
2 litres of stock *
3 large potatoes per person, cut in to very thick slices
2 cups of petite pois *
a splash of oil

1. Take your home made frozen stock out of the freezer and blast with microwaves until boiling hot. Add two handfuls of your oregano (you know, the fresh stuff you bought, cut up, and froze for later). Keep it hot.

2. Cut the onions in to cubes and crush the garlic, fry in the oil at a high heat, stirring frantically to avoid them burning

3. Remove from the heat and throw in the mince, keep the mince in fairly large chunks. maybe 1"x1". This makes the mince and tatties more like a chunky beef stew, and if you re-heat, will stop all the beef disintergrating in to a slurry.

4. put back on the heat, and fry, stirring to stop burning and sticking. Do this until you see no more bits or red raw beef on the outside.

5. Add the boiling hot stock (if you don't have home made stock, shame on you! Shame on you!!, but add 2 litres of boiling water instead). The 'boiling' is important. Mince will go rubbery if you add cold water an let it heat up. Only add cold water if you hate the people who will be eating the food.

6. Bring it to the boil again. Keep stirring. Throw in the peeled potatos.

7. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, until the potatos are mostly cooked through (that is, a knife meets some resistance at about the centre of the potato slice). Feel free to stir it.

8. Throw in the peas, cook for 5 minutes more.

9. Look at the resulting stew. Is there too much liquid? If so, boil until the ingredients are just covered.

Serve with Branston Pickle, or with tomato ketchup.

For better results, re-heat the next day and serve with Branston Pickle, or with tomato ketchup.

Freeze any that is not eaten, noting that your attempt to empty the freezer was only partially successful!