Staffordshire Oatcake Gravy

The Staffordshire oatcake is a soft oatmeal pancake from the Potteries, sold from hatches in Stoke on Trent and eaten folded round cheese and bacon. Most people never think to put gravy on one, which is a shame, because a savoury bacon gravy poured over a filled oatcake is a proper tea. The gravy has to be thin. An oatcake is soft to start with and a heavy gravy destroys it.

Ingredients

Makes about 450ml, enough for four oatcakes

• 4 rashers smoked streaky bacon chopped small
• 15g (½oz) butter
• 1 medium onion chopped finely
• 1 tbsp plain flour only one, keep it loose
• 550ml (18fl oz) chicken stock hot
• 1 tsp English mustard
• 1 tbsp chopped chives
• black pepper

Kit

• Frying pan
• Whisk

Method

1. Fry the bacon in a dry pan over a medium heat for 6 minutes until the fat has rendered and the pieces are browning at the edges. Lift half of it out with a slotted spoon and keep it for scattering on top.

2. Add the butter and the onion to the bacon fat and cook for 8 minutes until soft and lightly gold, scraping the base as you go.

3. Stir in the single tablespoon of flour and cook for 90 seconds. One tablespoon into 550ml gives you a gravy you can pour rather than spoon, and that is deliberate.

4. Add the hot stock in two goes, whisking each time until smooth, then bring to a simmer.

5. Simmer for 8 minutes. It will thicken only lightly and should still run freely from a spoon, more like a thin sauce than a gravy. An oatcake absorbs a lot, and a thick gravy just sits on the surface and slides off.

6. Whisk in the mustard, then season with black pepper. The bacon and stock usually bring enough salt, so taste before adding any.

7. Warm the oatcakes in a dry pan, fill with grated Cheddar and let it melt, fold them over, and pour the gravy across. Scatter the reserved bacon and the chives on top.

Tips worth knowing

• Warm the oatcakes properly. A cold oatcake goes rubbery and no amount of gravy fixes it. Thirty seconds a side in a dry pan is all it takes.
• Fill and fold before the gravy goes on, not after. Once the oatcake is wet it will not fold without tearing.
• If you cannot get real Staffordshire oatcakes, they are easy to make from oatmeal, flour, yeast and milk, and they freeze well interleaved with greaseproof paper.
• Keep the gravy thin all the way through. If it thickens while it sits, loosen it with hot stock rather than serving it thick.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps 3 days in the fridge. It thickens as it cools, so add stock or water when reheating and bring it back to a thin pouring consistency before it goes anywhere near an oatcake.

Questions people ask