mince beef – luxlifefinn

The direct translation for this mince beef sauce is descriptively ‘crumb sauce’. It’s perhaps not a pretty plate of food, but it’s one of my all time favourite childhood foods and I still cook it to date.

serves 2-4
vegetable oil
250g mince beef
1 onion
50g butter
1dl plain flour
500ml water
salt
black pepper
paprika powder
ground allspice

1. Peel and finely chop the onion. Place in a frying pan together with a splash of vegetable oil and the mince beef. During the cooking keep breaking the beef into smaller, ‘crumb’ like pieces, mixing together with the onion. Once ready, place aside in a bowl.

2. Boil the water. I’ve noticed that using hot water rather than cold will more easily give you a sauce that’s lump free. Melt the butter in the same frying pan you used for frying the meat. Once melted, add the flour. Mix together with the butter. If the mixture appears too dry (pictured below), you can add a little bit more butter. Fry, stirring, in medium heat until the butter – flour mixture has browned.

3. Reduce the heat to lowest possible setting. Pour about 300ml of water to the mixture. Whisk together until smooth. Add the remaining water, to the desired thickness. Add the cooked mince beef and the sauce together.

This is simple home cooking. Easy and quick (in preparation), and will be enough to take as lunch to work too. Now, I spent a great while trying to think what to call this dish. I couldn’t really come to any good definitive conclusion of what would be best, most describing name. I’m happy for anyone to give me suggestions on this. My mum used to make this when I was a child. She would always make two version: one with blue cheese for adults, and one without for the children (I’m the second oldest of five). These days, I always make mine with the blue cheese, but this can easily be left out if you’re not a fan.

2 onions
500g mince beef
6 medium to large potatoes
50g blue cheese (I used Roquefort)
5 dl milk
3 eggs
salt and black pepper
ground allspice, white pepper, paprika (optional)

1. Finely chop the onions, and fry in vegetable oil in a pan until they start to get translucent. Add the beef and mix with the onions. add spices of your liking. I tend to always use salt, black pepper, white pepper, allspice and paprika on my basic mince beef for various different foods. Cook until the beef is ready, breaking it into small bits as it’s cooking.

2. Peel and slice the potatoes. Layer about a third of them at the bottom of an oven dish. Then put half of the mince beef as the next layer. If using blue cheese, add half of it on next. Then a layer of half of the remaining potatoes, remaining mince beef and remaining potatoes on top.