Hamburger Steak Gravy

Hamburger steak is the plainer country cousin of Salisbury steak, and the gravy that goes with it is all about onions. There are no mushrooms and no mustard, just a lot of onion cooked far past soft into proper sweet brown, then let down with beef stock. It is a slower gravy than it looks and the twenty minutes on the onions is where the whole flavour lives.

Ingredients

Makes about 550ml, enough for four patties with rice or mash

• 3 tbsp beef dripping or fat from the patty pan
• 3 large onions about 500g, halved and sliced thin
• 1 tsp caster sugar helps the onions caramelise
• 30g (1oz) plain flour
• 600ml (1 pint) hot beef stock
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce for colour
• 1 bay leaf
• salt and black pepper to taste

Kit

• Heavy frying pan with a lid
• Wooden spoon
• Measuring jug

Method

1. Brown your beef patties hard in a heavy frying pan, three minutes a side, and lift them onto a plate. Leave three tablespoons of fat and all the brown fond in the pan.

2. Add the onions with a big pinch of salt and the sugar. Turn the heat to medium low, put a lid on and let them sweat for ten minutes, stirring once or twice. They will collapse and release a lot of water.

3. Take the lid off, turn the heat up to medium and keep cooking for another twelve to fifteen minutes, stirring often. The water boils away and then the onions start to brown properly. You want them the colour of dark honey, soft and sticky, not just translucent.

4. Scatter the flour over the onions and stir it in until there is no dry flour left. Cook for two minutes, scraping the base of the pan, so the flour toasts against the caramelised bits.

5. Pour in a third of the hot stock and stir hard to lift everything off the base. It will thicken instantly. Add the remaining stock, the Worcestershire sauce, the soy and the bay leaf.

6. Bring it to a simmer and slide the patties back in with any juices they have released. Cover loosely and cook for fifteen minutes over a low heat, turning them once, so they finish in the gravy.

7. Lift the patties out, fish out the bay leaf and check the gravy. It should be dark, sweet from the onions and thick enough to coat. Season with salt and a lot of black pepper and pour it back over the meat.

Tips worth knowing

• The lid on for the first ten minutes is a trick worth knowing. It steams the onions soft quickly so the browning stage takes fifteen minutes rather than forty.
• Slice the onions with the grain, from root to tip, rather than across. They hold their shape better through a long cook and you get strands in the gravy rather than mush.
• Do not rush past the honey coloured stage. Pale onions give you a thin, sweetish gravy with none of the depth that makes this dish worth cooking.
• Twenty per cent fat beef mince makes the best patties here. Anything leaner gives you a dry patty and a pan with nothing in it to build the gravy from.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps four days in the fridge and freezes for three months with the patties in it. Reheat covered over a low heat with a splash of stock. The onions soften further, which nobody has ever complained about.

Questions people ask