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

I do the soffrito thing, add tomatoes, herbs, Worcester sauce, glass of red wine. I don't brown the mince (I have tried both ways and it makes no difference to flavour) and I cook for a long time.

Pouring the fat off is bizarre though: all the flavour is in the fat. I have a friend who always does it and her food is awful.

If you're buying cheap mince because you're on a budget and then draining it, you're effectively throwing away half of what you paid for. You'd be better off buying a smaller quantity of better quality mince, surely? I buy mince from the butcher- it's great quality and not low in fat and I'd never dream of throwing any of the fat away! But it doesn't have added water like supermarket mince does. I reckon those who drain mince are throwing away some fat and a load of water. Total waste of money.

If I bought less mince then I could not feed everyone. I might try the more exspensive at some point though when less people are eating the mince see what it's like.

Is there a way to do the draining before the frying? Like... to add salt so the water is drained? Like you do it with aubergines before frying? I'm not a great cook or anything. But there is probably a way?

That's the problem with having the wrong pasta:sauce ratio. You're much better off with a small serving of fantastic sauce and more really good pasta.

Have never done this draining business. In the Italian version you buy less mince because it's primarily a pasta dish, not a mince dish. So you use wide pasta like tagiatelle or papardelle that gets coated in the sauce, not spagetti with a big dollop of mince on top.

Which is how a PP could feed loads of people on not much mince.

Horatio, you fry the mince and the fat melts out of it and then you can drain it off if you want to. I sometimes dab kitchen roll in to soak up the excess fat instead, so no you can't drain the fat off before frying.

I don't drain of the fat. Never even heard of it until this thread.

I'm simply trying to think of a way to 'spruce up' fatty/kind of low quality mince...

You only have to drain off the fat if you're using cheap mince. Otherwise you don't. For things like bolognaise cheap mince is a false economy. If you have the money to buy better quality it goes further and tastes better.

You can buy ready chopped soffrito from Waitrose/Ocado, though some people think it isn't finely chopped enough.

On the question of 'buying better mince', looking at Ocado (because it comes to hand), if you buy their 20% fat beef at £2 for 500g and drain off the fat to get to 5% fat you end up with 425g of 5% mince for £2. If you buy their 5% mince at £4 for 500g then for £2 you get 250g of 5% mince. So it is much more economical to buy the 20% mince and drain off the fat. I've no idea if this works for other supermarket prices, but it probably does as they either mince cheaper, fattier cuts to get the 20% mince or are having to put more labour in to trim the fat out of the meat before mincing for the 5%.

I know, Bertand. Of course.

But let's take a person that genuinely can't afford better quality mince. Which is a reality for many people in the U.K. And us talking about how they just need to buy less mince is useless if that would still be over budget.

So, how can low quality meat be spruced up? That's what I'm wondering.

No point trying to get rid of the water first - it will cook off with the other excess liquid. Cheap mince is a total false economy though - you're paying for fat you'll throw away and water that evaporates!

I don't buy any cut of beef with little fat, including topside or silverside sold as roasting joints, because I don't like the end result. Other people do.

Mince labelled 20% fat is fine and even desirable - if you're making burgers or meatloaf, ultra low fat mince doesn't stick together. I wouldn't pour all the flavour away either. I'd just think about eating something lower fat the next day.

1horatio, I don't know the answer to that. It's easy to say don't shop in supermarkets, find a good local butcher that offers far better value for money, buy cheap cuts of meat and mince it yourself etc, but that makes all sorts of assumptions about location, access to public transport, kitchen equipment, cooking skill, available time etc that just don't apply to many people on v low incomes.

jilly

I don't know either.:( but that's exactly what I meant.
The only thing I could think of is going more in a chilli direction and use a lot of beans or lentils? (Not canned beans. But the once you buy dry and first have to soak in water?) but that takes a looot of time. Maybe if made in a slow cooker?

Pulses are super cheap, also contain protein and if there is some good meat in there you'll get the taste. But idk. :( I sometimes wish there was a genuinely good low budget cook book. Not Jamie Oliver...

I'm all for improvising when cooking. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I made spaghetti bolognese a few weeks ago with a tin of tomato soup as I didn't realise we were out of both passata and tinned tomatoes. It worked out perfectly fine - I did have to play about a bit to reduce the sweetness. Balsamic vinegar and oxo cubes helped. I also don't add red wine to my cooking as wine makes me turn beetroot red in the face and ears.

That said I would never, ever not brown the mince. It would just make for a horrible spongy texture and all the fat would stay in the sauce mix

Anyway not a fan of Jamie Oliver. In my opinion he has an unhealthy obsession with fennel. Every single show of his I've ever seen he adds bloody fennel to something.

How cheap is 'cheap mince'?

I buy all of my meat (except at Christmas) from the reduced section in Tesco. Steak mince goes in burgers, not going to waste it on something where it isn't the main event. Plus as limited says, in burgers you need the fat to hold the burger together properly. Low fat mince goes in ragu, bobotie, shepherd's pie, meatballs etc. Haven't bought any full price mince in years and it's all supermarket stuff.

Yes I wait for all the injected water to evaporate off, but that's it. I'd never heard of draining off fat before this thread.

Fat is where the flavour is. You get fat like me from portions that are too big, eating too much sugary food and sitting about too much. Not by a bit of fat in some mince.

Lentils don't need soaking and don't take longer to cook than a spag bol would need anyway. But that's assuming people want to put pulses in their pasta sauce!

It's like the point Orwell makes in The Road to Wigan Pier, that of course you could spend your food budget on wholemeal flour and carrots, but people who are desperately poor want the comfort and "treat" factor of sweet tea and white bread and jam.

Totally agree about fat by the way. I don't give a toss how much fat I eat and I am slim. We need fat in our diets - it's not the devil. I just wish mainstream thinking would catch up with this.

1horatio I use frozen 20% fat mince from Sainsbury's now which is pretty cheap. I gave it a go and it looked weird - like pale pink worms. But I cannot tell the difference between it and the quality of the fresh prepackaged mince and the loose mince on the butcher's counter - all different price points in the same supermarket . I tried value fresh mince and that's not great, but not inedible.

I thought the most expensive would be on the butcher's counter, which looks very upmarket, but I checked and it's the fresh prepacked stuff by a mile. Makes sense. People just grab it rather than waiting to be served.

The other good thing about frozen mince is that you can cook it from the bag. So there's no planning or waste.

I agree, horatio.
And I don't really know. When I haven't been able to afford better quality meat I just haven't bought meat..........

I meant the beans :)

Btw, about the fat. I'm not overweight and I don't care about fat in food. I actually eat quite a lot of avocados, fatty fish, nuts, seeds, eggs etc.

But I don't really eat refined sugar and I don't eat a lot of pasta/bread etc and more whole grains. Not trying to preach here or anything. But I don't think that throwing away the fat will make you any slimmer.

I've always used cheap mince with a higher fat ratio as my friends half Italian mum used to make spag bol when I used to go round for tea. She said it adds flavour and she used to cook the onions and veg in the the fat.

So that what I do now except I don't add celery because .. well... celery is satans veg IMO.

Only one mention of the D-word so far.... DOLMIO

I happily cook 99% of my meals from scratch but spag bog is one of the very few 'lazy' meals that I don't bother with.
Brown onions and courgettes, any other extra veg I'm trying to hide, BROWN THE MINCE by lobbing it the pan on high and moving it around as little as poss, then chuck in a jar of Dolmio, maybe some marmite, simmer while the pasta cooks, job done.
I avoided pre-made jars for ages, esp when I was weaning as I usually hate pre-prepared food, but I quite like Dolmio and there's not really any junk in it.

If I really loved spag bog I'd do it properly but growing up it was what we always had when mum couldn't think of anything else to make so we had it all the time!

I buy all of my meat (except at Christmas) from the reduced section in Tesco.

I'm a Sainsbury's yellow sticker queen Wolpertinger . I went an hour ago, but I have so much stuff it wasn't worth buying more. Reduced shelf surfing can be dangerously addictive.

Tonight's dinner is goulash made with reduced cubed pork shoulder. Mashed potato because I have double cream to use up.

Tomorrow's will be bolognaise made with frozen mince enhanced with finely chopped lamb's liver (reduced). I'll start with a mirepoix of chopped onion, carrots and celery which are past their best. Will stir in a bit of cream if I still have it.