Beef bolognese with Parmesan dumplings
Mince and dumplings are great (I’ve written about how much I enjoy savoury mince and dumplings). Beef bolognese is great. At some point, somebody combined the two. I don’t know who. I first saw it on the Instagram feed of those Two Hungry Boys
I’ve written up the dumpling recipe as I made them, using yogurt, but this was done on the fly when it turned out we had no milk.
You will need
For the bolognese
- 500g beef mince
- A large onion, finely diced
- 3 fat gloves of garlic, minced
- A tin of tomatoes
- A teaspoon of stock powder or a stock cube, I used vegetable
- A couple of teaspoons of olive oil
- A wine glass or so of beer
- A teaspoon of celery salt (or… a few sticks of celery finely diced)
For the dumplings
- 1.5 cups of self-raising flour
- A big pinch of salt
- A couple of tablespoons of Greek yogurt
- About a tablespoon of grated Parmesan
- A handful of fresh herbs, finely snipped. I used basil, oregano and thyme, because that’s what was around.
Do
- Brown the beef in a casserole dish for a few minutes in the olive oil
- Add in the onion and garlic, cook on for another 5 minutes or so
- Add the stock, celery salt, beer and tomatoes
- Once it’s almost boiling, pop the lid on, turn the heat right down, and leave for a couple of hours, it should end up too liquid, don’t panic.
- Stick the oven on 200
- Mix all the dumpling ingredient in a bowl to form a smooth dough. Add a little water if needed/
- Add the dough to the top of bolognese, dividend up into golf ball sizes blobs
- Bake in the oven with the lid on for about 10 minutes
- Bake without the lid for about 10 minutes to brown the top
Result
The slow cook of the bolognese leaves it rich, the dumpling mix sucks some of the extra liquid out, the yogurt gives the dumplings a shiny finish.
