Frying beef mince and vegetables together

[GrannyHaddock]

Today's Telegraph (Sat 13th) has (unusually) a number of useful recipes in the Saturday section. Nothing with hard-to-find ingredients, family style, and the sort of dishes that don't take too long. One of them, Lazy Lasagne, is something I might cook. It starts with frying mince, onions, carrots and celery together. Is this really a good idea? When mince is fried (even the lower-fat versions) it produces a pool of watery grease that I tip away. I fry the veg separately and carry on from there. Am I being too fussy?

That’s how I always did it when I used meat mince. You can still drain the fat off.

I've always fried it all together.

I think the fat is where the flavour is - I never drain fat from mince.

Yes, I was going to say the fat = flavour too, then noticed OP said it was watery, although if you're getting a lot of water out of mince, you're probably buying the wrong mince.

You'll always get some water and fat out of even the best mince, but you need to fry it off until the water has evaporated and the mince starts to catch as that means you're getting a good Maillard reaction. This and the fat is where the flavour is, so don't chuck it away!

Just drain the fat off during the cooking. I’ve never cooked mince separately.

I must admit I do as you do op, but more because I’m fussy and have issues with fat!

Thanks for all those replies. I've not heard of the Maillard reaction, so I'll find out about that. I'm not buying cheap mince, though, (Waitrose usually) but as pp says, there's always some liquid produced (which does not solidify when it's cool). I only fry the meat until it changes colour as I figure it's going to be cooked again in the sauce, and I suppose I'm afraid of drying it out.
These recipes I've kept are from a book about to be published called We're Hungry! It does look useful as a family cookbook, but maybe the recipes I've cut out are the best of the bunch. I've been caught like that before!)

I fry the mince first at high temperature so that the liquid boils away and it browns properly - as a pp said you need that rich dark brown for flavour. Then I scoop the mince out and slowly cook the onions for about 5/10 min, adding other veg afterwards. (I suppose I could leave the mince in while I do the onions and other veg but it tends to mean the veg steam rather than fry so there isn’t quite the same flavour.) Then I put the mince back in.

Your pool of watery grease = temperature not high enough. If it’s going to be slow cooked in the sauce eg in a bolognese then you can’t really overcook it, so don’t worry about it drying out, more important to get colour and flavour. If you only cook it till it changes colour you won’t get the flavour.

For Italian based dishes I always cook the soffritto first then add the mince to that.

Thanks, that's really helpful