Super Savoury Beef Mince and Dumplings
Growing up I hated mince and plain boiled potatoes, which is a shame because other than me it was something of a family favorite. Having grown up, I still don’t enjoy boiled potatoes, but I discovered dumplings, and that changed everything.
This recipe uses far less fat in the dumplings than many but the self-raising flour and soda water makes them light and fluffy.
This cooks in one pan with a lid. I have a Le Creuset frying pan, which was painfully expensive but really is great and should last forever.
You will need
- Beef mince
- The same volume of finely diced onion, carrot and celery as you have mince. I used pre-chopped stuff from the supermarket
- A small onion cut into 8
- Half a can of beer (I used Stones bitter)Le Creuset
- A stock cube
- A teaspoon of dried oregano
- 150g of self-raising flour
- About 50g of beef suet or finely diced butter
- A big pinch of salt
- Soda water
- A couple of teaspoons of vegetable oil
Do
- Pop the mince and oil in the pan on a reasonable heat and brown the mince
- Lift the mince out (to stop it burning), leaving the fat in the pan
- Add the vegetables and cook them out for a good 5 minutes until the onions are starting to colour
- Add the mince, the stock cube, oregano, beer and about another 200ml of hot water
- Give it all a good stir round, pop the lid on and reduce the heat so it’s a gentle bubble
- After about 20 minutes, make up the dumplings
- If you’re using butter, rub it into the flour
- Add the salt and enough soda water to bring it together into a rough shaggy dough
- Split the dough into as many dumplings as you’d like. The bigger they are the longer they take to cook
- Nestle the dumplings in the pan. There should be more liquid than you’d like the final dish to have, the dumplings will soak it up.
- Cook under a lid for around 20 minutes - watch the liquid doesn’t boil away completely, though a few stuck on bits are good.
Result
The dumplings should puff up, their bases soaking up the juices, the beer and stock should have reduced to a delicious savory coating.
You might spy some sprouts in there. I tucked a few frozen ones in when I added the dumplings and they streamed at the same time.
