welfare

Burger It!

We love a good burger in our house.

We don’t have them very often so when we do it’s a real treat.

Our children have never been to a McDonalds, Burger King or any other junk food purveyor.

I can imagine that when they do (although I’d like to think they never will…) it will be a real eye opener for them. I can just see them going back to the counter with the sad little burger in hand… “What’s this? You call this a burger?”

I don’t know why more people don’t make their own? You can buy a kilo of mince meat for a lot less than it costs for a kilo of burgers. All you need to do is add a bit of seasoning, mix and form into a rough Pattie and throw on a grill, BBQ or frying pan.

However you can let your imagination run wild and flavour your meat with a vast array of ingredients.

And then you have your toppings, now this is where the fun starts!

You have to have cheese of some sort. I love a slice of Monterey Jack on a beef burger, but a medium cheddar is just as nice. If you want to ‘Posh’ it up I would go with some crumbly Stilton. One of my favourite burgers is a Mediterranean influenced lamb burger topped with a piece of grilled Halloumi and some ‘Ome made Tzatziki.

I like a nice mustardy mayonnaise on my beef burgers along with a little salad leaf, slice of tomato and I’m sorry but gherkins are good too. I also think a beef burger needs a good squirt of tomato ketchup.

Lately we have been making veal burgers. I know that some people are a little put off by veal but the place that we get it from uses the male animals from the place that they get their milk supplies from. If the animals are not sold for meat then they would be slaughtered at birth anyway. So personally I haven’t got a problem with eating veal that’s a by-product of the dairy industry, and from some where that has high standards for animal welfare.

Mince veal has quite a delicate flavour and it makes a really nice burger that compliments other ‘add ons’.

Heres a recipe you might want to try but feel free to add your own ‘add ons’ as everyone has different tastes. The burgers could be made with any sort of meat though.

Ingredients

1.2Kg veal mince (or beef or lamb), Waitrose often have a deal on veal mince, hence the amount which would cost £10

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

A really good grind of black pepper

A couple teaspoons of mustard. Dijon or wholegrain works best

And that’s it, although you could add other things if you fancy. Get your hands in the bowl and give it a really good ‘squish’ to thoroughly mix the ingredients into the meat.

I then line a tray with greaseproof paper, form the meat into burgers, place on the tray and chill which lets the burgers firm up a little. If you’re finding you have more meat on your hands than tray a tip is to shape the burgers using slightly wet hands. You may notice on the photos that we made some little meat balls from the same mixture, these were used in the Kids’ pack-up for their school lunch (I never got pack-up as good as theirs!), they would be equally as good in a tomato sauce with some pasta for a quick lunch or supper.

And that’s it your burgers are ready to go and be cooked using your preferred method.

So we had these little beauties topped with Chorizo, Monterey Jack cheese, an ‘Ome made tomato and habenero chilli salsa and some rocket and baby spinach leaves all sandwiched in a mini Ciabatta bun with a squirt of American style mustard spread on for good measure.

The salsa is really easy too if you want to have a go. Just dice some tomatoes, onions and chillies (which can be left out if you don’t want the heat). Add enough sugar to lightly coat the mixture, a little splash of vinegar and a good squirt or squeeze of lime juice. It now needs a good pinch of salt (I personally like a nice salty salsa)and a good grind of pepper. Again a salsa can easily be customized to your own liking.

We had these with some nice chunky baked chips and a little more salad leaf on the side.

Be prepared for juice dribbling down chins and arms, but then that’s all part of the enjoyment!

And don’t forget to tell you’re kids how much nicer and healthier Home-made burgers are compared to the high street, mass produced crap of fast food vendors!

BBQ Short Ribs

So one Friday I get a call from Mick the Butcher… “Jez” (Yeah, I know it’s Jerome or ‘Ome, I’ve never been a Jez but then Mick is Mike so I guess we’re even!) “I’ve got some Highland short ribs in d’ya want ’em?”

It turns out that a restaurant had ordered them but then decided at the last minute to change their mind, more fool them… what a treat!

The beast that the ribs hailed from came from a very well looked after herd of Highland Cross (Cross as in crossed with another breed not a bit ticked off… although if they knew what was coming I’m sure they’d be pretty livid!) cattle that reside about ten minutes walk from our house. Well you can’t get much more local than that!

If you have never cooked short ribs at first glance they seem particularly fatty. However you have to remember that these tasty hunks of meat need slow cooking at a temperature that allows the fat to render down and flavour the rest of the meat before being given a blast on a high heat to crisp up the remaining fat.

When it comes to cooking big chunks of meat I have to admit that the Americans seem to have it right. So, dry rub of spices, seasoning, sugar and herbs it is before a last minute glaze of something slightly sweet and spicy… I just know that the kids are going to get messy for this tea time!

The best thing to have with these ribs is a nice side of chips… or fries if you want to be really Americanised, salad and a nice vinegary ‘slaw’ to cut through the richness of the meat. We even had a squirt of tomato ketchup to finish it off, to be fair it went really well!

BBQ Short Rib Of Beef

I used 4.5 Kilo of ribs which would feed 8 hungry people. They do heat up quite well so if you have any left over you could always freeze until needed or you could halve the amount if you wanted to do less.

Dry Rub

2 tablespoon paprika

2 teaspoon smoked paprika (If you have it)

2 teaspoon chilli powder

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2 tablespoon Muscavado sugar (or dark brown or molasses)

2 teaspoons of salt

a good grind of black pepper

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Mix all the ingredients together and then rub into the ribs using your hands. The ribs can then be left to marinate up to 24 hours.

To cook preheat the oven to 220°C/428°F (slightly less if using a fan oven).

Place the ribs on a rack in a large roasting dish. Cover with a double layer of foil and then place in the oven. Turn the temperature down to165°C/330°F (145°C/290°F if using fan assisted oven).

The ribs can now be left to cook for 6 hours.

Sweet Chilli Glaze

50ml of vinegar (white wine or cider)

50ml water

2 tablespoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon chilli powder (or more if you like a real kick!)

dash of ‘Ome Made Chilli Sauce (or your favourite hot sauce)

1 tablespoon Tomato Ketchup

pinch of salt/pepper

1 teaspoon (about 1 clove) of crushed garlic

Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer gently for 20 minutes

Once the ribs have finished their slow cooking take out of the oven and turn the oven temperature up to a high heat (alternatively the ribs can be finished on a BBQ or can be left to cool and finished off another day)

Take the foil off the ribs and using a pastry brush give the ribs a good coating of glaze all over.

Put back in the oven (or on a BBQ) for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes take out of the oven again, give another coating of glaze and cook for a further 20 minutes after which the ribs should look shiny, sticky and slightly charred, if not cook for a little longer.

Once finished leave the ribs for ten minutes or so before serving, you don’t want to take the roof of your mouth off while eating… the ribs can be like the food equivalent to Napalm!

Oh… and make sure you have a hose ready to clean the kids down with afterwards!

The Ultimate Beef & Potato Pie…

After a fantastic Summer the temperature has dropped and it’s looking a little gloomy outside… (although now I am writing this it seems Summer is making a comeback!) but that’s ok, it means it’s time to start cooking those lovely comforting foods!

And what could be more comforting than a big old fashioned Meat & Potato pie, or two!

It was handy that our friendly butcher had just had delivery of a nice highland cross cow then (cross as in hybrid breed, not a bit ticked off!)

When I’m slow cooking beef for stews or pies I love to use the shin. After hours of cooking it is lovely and tender, sticky and sweet and it gives your gravy soooooo much depth of flavour and because of the gelatinous nature of the cut it naturally thickens your gravy too.

As a bonus, because we had the whole shin we got to take the bones away too to make a lovely ‘Ome-made beef stock.

And of course I couldn’t resist popping along to the local off licence (Cheers Mr Mitchell!) to get a couple bottles of ale to make the gravy with. I used Badger Breweries Poachers Choice. A lovely dark beer flavoured with Damsons. It always reminds me of Autumn and Winter. It’s one of those beers that gives you that lovely warm fuzzy feeling, ideal for drinking on a cold winters night around an open fire. Of course some of the beer didn’t make it into the finished product!

So we have lovely rare breed, high welfare beef. ‘Ome-made beef stock to make the gravy, enriched with some rich fruity beer. A crumbly, butter laden, golden pastry crust… It all sounds fantastic but I’m sure there is something missing?

Of course! A good friend to share it with!. Cue Pete, now lets get stuck in!

First job is the stock.

If you don’t have the bones, the time or you just rather wouldn’t make your own then that’s fine. Just replace with bouillon or stock cubes.

I made this the day before I made the pie as I wanted to use the stock to cook the meat in.

So, I used the whole shin bone. Mick at the farm shop kindly cut it into three pieces so that it could fit in our stock pot.

First of all I roasted the bones a few carrots and a couple of onions in a moderate oven for roughly 45 minutes. this just starts to caramelise the flesh, fat and sinew that’s left on the bones which will help give your stock a deeper flavour and a lovely dark colour (in fact to help with this I sprinkle a bit of sugar over!).

I then put the bones, onion and carrots in a stock pot, covered with water and put on to boil. whilst the water comes up to the boil I added 1 star anise, roughly 5 bay leaves, a teaspoon of black pepper-corns and a generous pinch of thyme. The stock can now be left for a couple of hours (ours was on for about four!) simmering away.

After a few hours, or more if you have the time, you need to take the bones out of the stock and strain the stock into another pan. You can now add your ale, wine or anything else you want to flavour the stock with. This then needs to be reduced by about two thirds by boiling vigorously.

If there is any marrow left in the bones, scoop it out and whisk it into the stock to enrich it. In our case if MissT is knocking about then it won’t make it that far, she absolutely loves bone marrow!

The stock needs to cool and ideally be refrigerated so that the fat can solidify and be skimmed off. It is then ready to use.

Cooking The Pie filling

I cooked the meat in big pieces. This allowed me to cook the meat for a long time to allow the fat and connective tissue to break down, make the meat melt in the mouth, add flavour and texture to the finished gravy.

I used 3 Kilo of Shin. This made 2 pies to feed 10 – 12 hungry people. Of course you could easily half the amount or if you can’t manage two pies you can freeze one portion of the cooked mixture to make another pie or a stew at a later date.

Generously coat your meat with seasoned flour (the easiest way to do this is to put the flour in a plastic bag, add your meat a bit at a time and give it a good shake!).

Heat some oil in a heavy bottomed pan and then gently fry your meat until it has a nice golden colour. then add your stock to just cover the meat. bring to a simmer, cover and then put in the oven at 130°C/260°F for four hours.

In our case we now took the kids to their swimming lessons (which takes about three hours!). If however you don’t have swimming lessons to do then I could recommend; mowing the lawn, cleaning the chickens out, fixing the leak under the sink or best of all going for a nice pint at your local!

Once the meat is cooked it can be taken out of the gravy put on a plate and covered with cling film to keep it moist.

The rest of the filling can now be added to the gravy to cook. I used around 1/2 Kilo of potatoes in big chunks, a couple of carrots cut up in big chunks a couple of medium sized onions roughly sliced and about 250g of baby button mushrooms left whole. Just chuck the whole lot into the gravy and then put back into the oven at 175°C/350°C for about an hour or until your potatoes are just cooked through.

The Pastry

I used short crust this time around. You could use puff (bought from the shop is fine) or rough puff. if you have a favourite recipe for pastry then you could use that. For two pie lids I used roughly 1 kilo of flour, so adjust your recipe to suit. I rubbed in 375g of butter to 1 kilo of flour with a couple of level teaspoons of salt added. I would normally use some lard (300g butter and 75g lard) however I had run out so to the mixture I added a couple tablespoons of beef suet. In the end it worked rather well!

Once the fat is rubbed into you flour add enough cold water (I throw a couple ice cubes in the water to really chill it) to just bring the pastry together. briefly knead and then wrap in cling film and leave to rest for at least twenty minutes.

Creating The Pie

While your veg is finishing cooking make a thick roux by melting roughly 55g of butter in a heavy based pan. Once sizzling add approximately 2 tablespoons of flour and stir for a minute until you have something that resembles golden brown putty. Put to one side. This will be whisked into your gravy to get a perfect consistency.

select your pie dishes and break the meat up into them. I like to leave it fairly chunky.

Using a slotted spoon remove your cooked veg from the gravy and place among the meat.

Put the gravy back on a gentle heat. You can now add any extra flavourings you want. I added a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce. You want a nice thick gravy for your pie so whisk in the roux you prepared earlier, a little at a time until you have the desired consistency.

Ladle the gravy over your pie mixture. You want some of the filling to be peaking out so the pastry has something to sit on top of. You should have a little gravy left over to serve along side your pie.

Roll out your pastry to cover your filling. It wants to be just under a centimetre thick. Place the pastry over the pie dish. don’t stretch it over. You want a bit of give to allow for the pastry shrinking. Trim the edges and put a couple holes in the middle to allow steam to escape. Decorate with the excess pastry if you want and then generously egg wash the pie topping.

The pie now needs to be cooked for 50 minutes to an hour on 195°C/380°F (if using a fan oven reduce the temperature by about 20°C/70°F). Once your pie is golden brown and your filling red hot the pie is ready, however it will benefit from being left for fifteen minutes or so before serving.

We had ours with Mushy Peas (or as Pete called them ‘Steeped Peas’) and gravy.

Pies don’t come much better than this and when you have the fantastic company of an old friend it makes for a memorable meal!

Oh… and Mick, that beef… simply the best!