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

Ha ha, I remember that. The tinned mince!

Bless her. She was very good on the webchat though, which messed with my head because I wanted her to be a pompous old trout and she wasn't. Nigella however (my favourite books just because of the way she writes and the photos and the way she almost shags the food) was very self-publicising "recommend me a X Nigella" and she'd just go "look in my book" 300 times.

My favourite is Rick Stein in a grumpy old codger that I quite weirdly fancy kind of way. Nigel Slater needs a bloody hairwash and to stop peering weirdly into the back of his fridge for the "smidgen of hand stroked and massaged £350 a kilo organic rhino cheese" he just "happens" to have lying in there and pausing in the wrong place in his sentences. The Hairies are lovely but you just know they've not washed their hands after weeing and before cooking and James Martin gives me the total creeps for some reason with his abnormal pronunciation- veering from hie nie brine kie to ey up where's t'whippet and me flat cap ALL IN ONE SENTENCE.

I may be over-invested in cookery programmes I realise

Jamie is also obsessed with making everything 'zingy'. 'Zingy', in Jamiese, appears to mean 'contains quite a lot of raw garlic'.

Anybody else like to watch Gordon Brown? He's the one with the great scrambled egg cook along recipe, I think... fluffy and soft and creamy!

1horatio Gordon Brown ?

I won't hear a word against the Hairy Bikers. More specifically their diet cook books. I've cooked a lot out of them the last 6 months (a LOT) and never had a recipe let me down. And I'm 3 stone lighter. We love Si and Dave in this house.

Hairy bikers sausage casserole is delicious. Needs more beans though.

Jamie's recipes always include a shit load of olive oil, so I suspect he does mean you to brown / fry the mince to some extent after the vegetables are done in a very wide pan.

My mother has experimented extensively with both browning and non-browning methods and swears end result is the same.

Personally I find even the faintest taste of watery rancid beef tang in my spag bol to be completely repellent, and so I always brown it. Maybe I can't even really taste it, but the look of the grey thing swimming in its own fat-and-protein-speckled water/juices grosses me out.

Last minute pick-ups for Spag Bol: balsamic vinegar, brown sauce, Worcester sauce? Anything to add a bit of sugar and umami. In a pinch, sugar and salt.

Not Gordon Brown.

Mumsnetting and reading/doing other things at the same time is bad 😂

Gordon Ramsay.

Not sure anyone enjoys watching Gordon Brown...Except Mrs Brown, presumably ;-)!

I sometimes do the JO way if I have time to let it simmer for an hour, but I put in far less water than his recipe asks for as, like you have, it's like a spag bol soup!

You've got to brown it, and tip off the fat that comes out, that fat tastes grim! Maybe JO minces prime steak, so has V little fat in his fancy chef mince?

Love Delia's rage!!!

I fry mince off first as it speeds things up a little.

Aww YANBU that sounds gross - can you use a turkey baster to get rid of some of the goo?

I got in from work tonight (OH is off work and has limited cooking skills) and he said he'd do something quick for me and the kids as I am going for a swim.

I get in at five to see him preparing a stew ... he's been in ALL DAY - we normally eat at 6!

I can't say anything though as it's "discouraging" him ....

That is chopping up the raw ingredients for a beef stew.....

If it's the recipe from the ministry of food book then that's the one I always use. I add wine instead of water and also chuck in a bit of tomato purée. It's always nice when I do it! I never fry my mince off now.

Browning mince is the very first thing I ever learned in the kitchen. It's an absolute necessity for flavour & texture. Don't try to rescue, it's fucked!

My dh fries the mushrooms and onions, takes them out and then fries the meat before putting everything in. I dryly meat first. It sounds a watery recipe. I use one can of tomatoes and a splodge of tomato paste but no other liquid unless I fancy a bit of red wine in it! Yuck!

I think now is a good time to mention that I find 'spag bol' a bit grating lives dangerously.

Mince in, after the bacon.

Never heard of not browning it first.

a knob of butter improves anything

communion help I want to cut my own head off when OH suggests "spag Bol" ft tea it's so bloody boring.

Oh no, ther s nothing boring about it. It's awesome (imo).

But DH is cooking tonight ;)

And I have recently fallen in love with Mary Berry - she's so old school and just explains everything properly I love ❤️ her

Ok NC so not outing. I work for a company who are linked with Jamie Oliver and I have cooked this recipe LOTS. The key is in the temperature and leaving the spag Bol alone (ie not stirring a lot). The mince tends to taste better if it's got a bit of fat in it. I've tried the 5% stuff in it and it tasted foul. I also tend to put a bit less water than the recipe says. With a bit of tweaking this bolognase really is lovely.

As for rescuing it now it's cooked, is probs add some oats or more oxo