Savory mince and good freezer meals

meoklmrk91

I made savory mince today, the recipe called for a teaspoon of gravy mix and afterwards water thrown over the mince. It tasted great but ended up quite dry, I would like a nice thick gravy like sauce, anything I can do to make it like that next time. Here's the recipe I used.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon melted butter or 1 tablespoon oil
1 onion, finely chopped
500 g mincemeat ( ground beef)
1 cup water
1 beef stock cube
1/4 teaspoon freshly minced garlic
Dried Herbs
1 pinch rosemary
1 pinch thyme
1 pinch oregano
1 pinch parsley
1 dash Worcestershire sauce ( about a dessertspoon)
1 teaspoon gravy mix
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon cornflour ( if needed to thicken the mince)

Directions
Heat butter or oil in a large pan, add onion and garlic.
Sauté until onion is transparent.
Increase heat, add mince and dash of Worcestershire sauce- stir often to break up the lumps of mince and cook until mince has browned.
Drain fat or liquid residue.
Add the crumbed stock cube, herbs, gravy powder, salt and pepper.
Make sure the gravy powder is combined with the mince so it does not go lumped when the water is added.
Slowly add the water to the mince mixture stirring all the time.
Bring to boil, reduce to simmer and cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Page 2 of 2Savoury Mince (cont.)
Directions
If mince needs thickening add a little cornflour (ie 1 tsp) in water to the mix to thicken.
Serve on buttered toast or with rice or mashed potatoes and steam vegetables.

Also I just moved into a new place on my own so I am cooking a freezing lots of leftovers to save money. So far a stir-fry, not sure how that will be but we will see, savory mince, a curry, spag Bol, I'm also going to make a batch of my favourite soup, can anyone recommend any other meals like this that I can cook a big batch of and save money doing it.

Tipperary animal lover

Add a packet mince meal maker from Erin knorr etc and add/or a tin of tomatoes with herbs in it that give more flavour and sauce.

dee_mc

lasagne freezes and reheats really well, I wouldn't freeze cooked stir fry as it's hard to reheat it without overcooking, but I often freeze raw chopped peppers and use them from frozen in a stir fry (no need to defrost), tastes exactly the same as fresh.

B0jangles

If you like indian curries, Keema Mattar is a very tasty thing to make with beef or lamb mince:

The Ingredients
Serves 3
1 tablespoon cooking oil/ Ghee if you have it (tastes a lot better)
1-2 medium onions, chopped
5-8 cloves garlic, chopped
500g minced lamb or beef
2 inch cube of ginger, peeled and grated
As many or as few chillis as you like
4 teaspoon ground coriander seeds (get whole and mangle them with a mortar n pestle
2 teaspoons ground cumin / 1 tsp whole
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper/hot chilli powder
1-2 squirt of tomato puree
1 cinnamon stick
250ml water
300g peas (frozen are fine) (Or as many as you feel like)
About 1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon garem masala
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

The Cooking
Heat the oil in a wide frying pan over a medium flame. When hot, add the onions and cook for 5-7 minutes or so until they’re starting to turn brown. Don’t worry about under or over cooking them too much, this dish is quite forgiving.
Add the garlic and fry for one more minute, giving it a bit of a shake and stir so it doesn’t burn. Add the whole cumin and fry til it starts to pop.
Now add the minced meat, ginger, chillies, ground coriander seeds, ground cumin and cayenne. Give it a good stir.
Fry for about 5 minutes or so on a fairly high heat, breaking up any lumps as you go.
When it’s nice and brown add a bit of water (maybe at most 100 mls), the tomato puree and the stick of cinnamon. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and leave it to simmer for 30 minutes. Check it every now and then and use the power of your brain to assess whether it’s too dry and needs more water or it’s fine.

Taste often - be warned it may seem a bit bland since there is no salt at this stage. Take out the cinnamon stick when it tastes a bit cinnamony but not overpoweringly so. Squirt in some tomato puree, again, the amount is a judgement thing, I usually go with 1-2 tablespoonfuls.
Now add the peas, salt, garam masala, lemon juice and maybe a bit of water if it seem like it needs it. Mix it all in and bring it back to a simmer – cook until the peas are done (about 5 minutes). Taste it. Add more salt if you feel it needs it.

Serve with bread/rice/dhal.

One other thing - If you want to keep to a budget don't everbuy spices in those crappy little schwarz jars from the supermarket; they are INCREDIBLY overpriced. If at all possible get to an indian or chinese supermarket, you'll get 10 times as much for half the cost.

dee_mc

Freezing raw chicken breasts (whole or chopped)in a marinade is also a great idea, something simple like honey, soy sauce, chilli and fresh grated ginger, just pop in a freezer bag and the marinade starts to work before it becomes frozen, then continues to work as it defrosts, lovely flavour. I don't use garlic in this when I freeze it as garlic can taste musty having been frozen for some reason. This would work with fish too, e.g. freeze raw salmon darnes in a sweet chilli marinade.
Keeping with the mince theme, raw burgers freeze well too.