To think that when you make a spag bol

[HelloCanYouHearMe]

You fry the mince off first?!

DP rarely cooks & tonight has decided to do spag bol and is following a Jamie Oliver recipe (which in itself is U afaic)

The recipe has him frying off onion, celery, carrot, garlic... so far, so good. Then it goes on to say to throw in the minced beef & 2 cans to tomatoes, water from 2 cans and simmer for an hour.

The hour is up & DP asked me to taste - the casserole dish is swimming in liquid & tbh all i can taste is powdery boiled mince

blackcherries I used jar sauces for years but gave them up about a year and a half ago. I decided to cut out all artificial sweeteners from my diet and found out jar sauces are full of them. DH also has GERD and since we ditched the jars his stomach has been a lot better. He's only had about 3/4 really bad days the whole of last year, previous to that I would say it was more like once a week.

The only pre made sauce I would consider using now is the Seeds of Change ones. They use cane sugar rather than sweetners.

Waves to limited

I drive past Tesco on my way home from work, pop in and have alook at their reduced chiller section. I pick up anything I fancy meat and fish wise and take it home, divide into portions if necessary and lob it all in the freezer.

Then I can plan meals around it when I feel like it. Currently we are still using up Christmas - tonight is ham and bean stew, with stock from the ham bone which has also been sitting in the freezer since Boxing Day. Pudding will be panettone bread and butter pudding. I think I run the same system as you

limitedperiod

That sounds tasty. We'll have parmigiana today :)

thanksforallthefish yeah that's why I tend not to use them - literally only sacla pesto, Dolmio once a month or so, and spicey paste things from the Asian shop. I was surprised that Dolmio only has natural ingredients and although it is on the sweet side, I actually quite like it.

I make my own pasta sauce for other uses.
good to hear your DH is improving!

I brown the mince first and I'm pretty sure that is what the Jamie Oliver recipe states you should do (the one on the internet that I have used certainly does anyway). I don't pour away the fat but use low-fat steak mince so it isn't that fatty anyway.

I think we do Wolpertinger.

That'll be nice 1horatio. I never make parmigiana but I do often eat it in restaurants or if someone else has done it. I've cut down on the meat we eat - not from a health POV but from a cheapskate one. I realised that I was putting too much in when I examined the quantities in restaurant and ready meals. I don't want to end up on a Channel 4 programme about superscrooges, but I've cut it down. It helps your budget and your weight.

I can't be bothered to cook dried pulses from scratch and think what you save in money on the tin you waste far more on the cooking fuel. So I use a lot of supermarket own brand tins which are often 3 for 2. It helps that I like beans in meat casseroles, especially those big fat butter beans from Spain (think they're called judias or something) and flageolets and eat a couple of spoons from the tin before adding.

Sainsbury's basics tinned red kidney beans are great. They're a bit tough so I pour the whole lot in a saucepan with a bit of salt and simmer for about 20 minutes and then they're good to go.

Thanks :) it should be good ;) (unless I mess it up or something).

DH is the one that cooks usually (especially on weekdays) so I try to cook food he (and admittedly I ) likes when it's my turn.

And I think I might try the basic red beans you mentioned. Thanks!

Want to know the best parmigiana recipe ever? Thick slices of peeled aubergine fried first in egg batter. T;is food of the gods.

And no, I don't drain any fat off that either.

(btw the much maligned and ridiculed Antony Worrall Thompson's moussaka recipe is totes amazing and the only one I ever use. Bloody lovely)

I'd buy tickets to see the equally loathsome JO and Delia in a boxing ring. Not naked preferably though. I can never quite decide which one is more irritating. (Actually, I lie, JO wins by a mile, and because DS answered my question on the MN webchat about whether it was true she made the workmen piddle in the garden when they filmed at her gaff)

Speaking of cheap mince- when I did my O level domestic science we made Cottage Pie. Lots. My Mum, and my friend Lesley's Mum, sent us on the Monday to get the mince for the Tuesday lesson. My Mum with strict instructions to get it not from the family butcher that everyone had known since eternity and who licked his fingers, but from the Asda.

I didn't. Once. I got it from the butcher.

The Cottage Pie came home with a veritable pool of grease on top of the potato. It had sort of defied gravity and made its way skywards. It was rank and went straight in the bin. So I can understand the need to drain some of the fat if your meat is that kind of fatty. I just can't understand why you'd use that in the first place!

I don't even use mince, I use beanfeast. I'm the lowest of the low

vintage

Nope, no fat drainage here either. But I do put the fried Aubergine on a paper, the excess fat gets stuck on that. And I don't peel away the skin.

I do love moussaka. I always use DM's recipe..

But, tbh, I think it's great the OP's husband is trying. And cooking with cookbooks is imo a real hassle... pretty much everything I cook I cook with eye and hand measurements. I once tried to write down a gnocchi recipe... :/
But the only things I'm really good at cooking are these I learned from DM or my grandmothers. DH can take a cookbook, look at a recipe and it's just amazing :0!

Really good at sounds conceited... but people like them. Shrug.

But DH is the better cook of us. Much better.

1horatio - sounds like he is very trying

Can't believe how many different ways there are to make bolognese!
I very finely chop onions, throw them in with oodles of garlic once I've browned the mince,
Couple of tins of tomatoes, little bit of purée and about 1/4 a tin of water. Loads of freshly ground pepper and salt.
Leave to cook for 20-30 mins and it's done... it ain't perfect but it's a decent meal that were always pretty excited to tuck into.

Going to excitedly make the carbonara recipe tomorrow! I've tried to make a good one a few times. I end up with bits of cooked egg stuck to my pasta!

If you boil you need to boil for a LONG time or it's tasteless. Fry or slow cook are the only two options in my book.

jill?

Are you mocking my English or the DH's cooking efforts?

Mince that hasn't been browned won't kill you and it might even taste alright if you're a decent cook with decent ingredients.

It's wrong however, to say that it makes no difference. The browning of meat is also known as the Maillard technique to chefs, and is a chemical reaction that gives a completely different (and far better) flavour and texture to meat that essentially been boiled in liquid.

Some people won't notice the difference, others will.

See I would brown for spag Bol but I tried a JO beef stew recipe as mentioned further up and now I use it all the time (with a few alterations!)
It's the meatiest, tastiest stew I've eaten and no browning needed

hungryhippo- make sure you remove the pan from the heat before adding your egg mixture and do it quickly. The scrambled egg thing sometimes happens anyway, tastes just as good, just looks a bit odd.

But browning the mince makes it dry and crusty: it has a much better texture unbrowned.

A quick google on the subject suggests browning only a small proportion of your mince. I might give it a try.

His cooking efforts, 1Horatio!

jill

Oh. Oops...

Well, if it's his first time cooking?

Yeah, we brown the mince first.

Jamie Oliver is a tit though, so no surprise he doesn't do things properly. If you want the full Jamie effect, you need to serve it on a bit of roofing slate and charge £25 for it.

he is a total tit.
one day he is there slagging off mothers in poverty about what they feed their children, the next he is selling packets of pasta that are twice the normal price just because they have a pic of his smug chops on....
fucking hypocrite