Geordie Mince and Dumpling Gravy

Mince and dumplings is a north east weeknight standard and it lives or dies on the gravy. It has to be thick enough to hold a dumpling up without it sinking and drowning, and savoury enough to be the whole meal. Cook the mince properly rather than just breaking it up in a pan and you get a gravy that tastes braised instead of boiled.

Ingredients

Makes about 800ml of mince in gravy, enough for four with dumplings

• 1 tbsp beef dripping or oil
• 500g (1lb 2oz) beef mince not too lean, 15 percent fat is right
• 1 large onion chopped
• 2 carrots diced small
• 2 tbsp (30g) plain flour
• 600ml (1 pint) beef stock hot
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp Marmite
• 2 bay leaves
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Casserole or deep pan with a lid
• Wooden spoon

Method

1. Get the pan properly hot with the dripping in it, then add the mince in one layer and leave it alone for 4 minutes. Resist stirring. You want a brown crust on the underside, and constant poking gives you grey boiled mince and a weak gravy.

2. Break it up, brown the other side for another 3 minutes, then tip it into a bowl and leave the fat in the pan.

3. Turn the heat down, add the onion and carrot and cook for 10 minutes until soft, scraping the brown residue off the base as they release moisture.

4. Stir in the flour and tomato purée and cook for 2 minutes until the mixture is thick and rusty coloured.

5. Return the mince, then add the stock a third at a time, stirring well after each. Add the Worcestershire sauce, Marmite and bay leaves.

6. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook on the lowest heat for 40 minutes. Stir every 10 minutes or so and scrape the base. It should go from soupy to thick and glossy, the sort of consistency where a spoon leaves a track that fills in slowly.

7. Season with salt and plenty of pepper. If you are adding dumplings, drop them on top now, put the lid back on and cook for 20 minutes without lifting it. If the gravy looks thin at this point, uncover and reduce for 5 minutes first, because the dumplings will only release more moisture.

Tips worth knowing

• Use mince with some fat in it. Extra lean mince makes a thin gravy with nothing to carry the flavour, and you end up compensating with more stock cube and more salt.
• Dumplings need steam, not liquid. Sit them on the surface, not in it, and keep the lid on for the full 20 minutes or they come out dense.
• If your gravy tastes flat, it usually needs acid rather than salt. A teaspoon of vinegar or a squeeze of ketchup wakes it up.
• Make it in the morning and let it sit. Reheating mince gravy the next day is genuinely better, and the dumplings go on fresh at the end.

Keeping and reheating

Fridge for 3 days, freezer for 3 months. Freeze the gravy without the dumplings, which go heavy and wet on reheating, and make fresh ones when you serve it.

Questions people ask