Recipe test - Lamb crumble

This recipe comes from the Sainsbury's website where it was recommended as being ideal for toddlers and the whole family.

The recipe apparently serves 12-14 - we pretty much halved the amounts and had it for tea for the three of us and froze the remainder for Luke for future lunches (using our pea in the pod freezer trays, of course). I reckon there was enough for 3 or 4 of his meals left (he's nearly two).

Prep time was said to be 20 minutes but I would work on a bit more than that. You would need a huge pan to brown 1.5 kg of lamb mince in one batch and I took three batches to brown half that amount. You can chop the veg whilst waiting for the mince to brown.

Here's the ingredients list:

For the filling:

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1.5kg lamb mince (the recipe says frozen mince, personally I blitz lamb from my butcher in the food processor unless I can get decent mince)
2 sticks celery, diced
3 medium onions, finely chopped
2 carrots, diced
50g wholemeal flour
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
500ml lamb or beef stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the topping:

180g wholemeal flour
150g butter, diced
150g cheshire cheese, grated
chopped thyme, a teaspoon full
chopped rosemary, a teaspoon full

instructions:

preheat the oven to 190C (gas mark 5)

heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the veg for about 5 minutes

add the lamb and cook until brown (another 5 minutes, according to the recipe)

mix in the flour, tomato puree worcestershire sauce, stock and seasonings

turn out the mixture into 2 shallow dishes

Place the flour and the butter in a bowl and rub until it resembles breadcrumbs

Add the cheese and herbs and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle over the filling and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Verdict:

3 out of 5. Pretty tasty, overall, especially if you use decent qualify meat not cheap watery mince. We thought that the crumble topping was a bit too short and maybe less butter would be good, but it made a nice change from mashed potato. Luke seemed to enjoy it, although his favourite bit of the meal was the baked potato. For all the benefits of cooking in big batches, this was not fun to make on this scale given the amount of mince to brown.

posted by Richard @ 1:15 PM