Christian’s Meat Sauce recipie

For spaghetti, musakka, lasagne, neopolitan pasta sauce or anything else that is based on mince

Ingredients:

• 500g fresh minced steak or mince beef
• If using frozen 'free-flow' mince, use 750g
• 1 medium to large onion (or two small onions), diced
• 3 tbsp beef stock powder (or 2 oxo cubes)
• 1 tbsp dried herbs
• or 2 tbsp of fresh, chopped herbs
• 1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper - coarse
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 2 tbsp tomato puree

Tools:

• 1 large bowl for mixing meat and seasonings
• Large plate
• Large wide sided frying pan (such as a wok), or a saucepan and a large pan

Preparation:

Break the meat into the bowl and then sprinkle over half of the dry ingredients (if using frozen 'free-flow' mince, allow it to partially defrost), then mix the meat with the seasonings, and then sprinkle over the rest of the seasonings and mix in well, this will avoid lumps of seasoning. Add in the worcestershire sauce, and then mix again. Be careful not to over mix and make a pulp, keep some of the texture in the meat - it does not matter if the seasonings are not fully mixed in as that makes for some variety.

Then roughly form the mince into golfball sized lumps - there is no need to over work it to make perfectly smooth balls. I like to just grab fingerfulls, leaving the finger holes and lumps of mince. Set these meatballs or patties aside on a plate.

Cooking:

A photograph slideshow is available for the cooking method.

Bring a wide frying pan to a high heat and fry the diced onion in a little oil or butter until slightly translucent.

Then throw in a few meatballs, and don't move them around. Don't over-crowd the pan, just leave enough space between each meatball for the steam to get out. You will then notice that the meatballs start to brown on one side, then roll them over to get some more parts of them brown (it's not vital to brown them all over, and it won't matter if a small bit gets slightly 'burnt'). If you could not fit all of the meatballs into one pan, remove the ones that have browned sections and add the remaining meatballs.

Then, once each meatball has a section of browned area, throw them all back into the wok (or large pan, along with all the oil and onion). Then break up the meatballs, allowing the raw bits to get just a little bit of cooking. Then add the tomatoes and puree. Season and taste. Add a dash of red wine or port, or additional tomotoes (you can add fresh ones now).

By forming meatballs for the first part of the cooking, this allows some of the meat to brown and develop flavour, and keeps some of the meat undercooked to keep the juices in. If you just add the mince and cook it all together, it can end up just being a slop of one texture and taste.

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