Minced beef cobbler

Hello Dear Reader,

Thanks to everyone who has entered the £50 Bonmarche giveaway - to enter, all you have to do is tweet @queen_frugal and her #frugalbonmarche giveaway. Wrapping up warm will save you some money but the biggest way that I save money is on the way I use energy around my home. 

I use my mini oven when I'm cooking one meal just for the two of us. I bought my mini oven from Argos, but they are commonly found everywhere. When we went to France, the caravan didn't have an oven, so we took it with us. You could use it in a camper van, or keep it in the utility room or as we do, just on the side in the kitchen. It uses a fraction of the energy that a big oven uses. If it's just the two of us, then I can cook for two days by using a larger casserole dish and cooking for two days. I cover it with a microwave 'lid' and put the meals in the fridge until the next day.

Whilst I'm here, I'll share my recipe for Minced Beef cobbler.

250g of minced beef
3 carrots - peeled and finely diced
1 onion - finely chopped
6 chopped mushrooms
cup of frozen peas

Fry the above and don't add oil - the mince has enough fat.

Add some water, a stock cube, some thyme and a squirt of tomato ketchup and leave to simmer.

Thicken with instant gravy and pour into a roasting dish.

To make the cheese scones to top...................the cobbles.

225g of SR flour
55g of marg or butter
40g of grated cheese - I used 20g of parmesan
150ml of milk

Rub in the marg or butter and add the grated cheese. Stir in the milk to form a dough.

Press flat with your hands or roll out and cut out the scones and place on top.

Place in the mini -oven (pre-heated to 180) for thirty minutes.

Mine looks sticky and dark but the light had gone and this was from the flash on the camera. This made meals for two nights and the next night just took eight minutes in the microwave as I stack the two meals with covers on top of each other and re-heat both at the same time.

I got really lucky on Sunday afternoon and picked up ready to roast potatoes and veggie packs including broccoli for 25p each! 

Even though I have a menu plan, if it's in the freezer then I consider that to be used at any time as long as it's some where on the plan. I use my slow cooker to cook cheaper cuts of meat and it's wonderful for slowly braising steak or sometimes known as chuck steak. It's cut from the shoulder of the beast and as it's a deeply muscular part of the body, it will require slow cooking. Along with the other fore quarter of beef, such as brisket which is best slow cooked, you could also use plate or skirt and shank or shin. The supermarkets are generally rubbish with meat and don't know which part they are selling and will just label beef as stewing or braising but the cut is important. A good local butcher will be able to sell you exactly what you want. Very few seem to sell it on the bone, which is a shame as it always tastes better that way. 

Meat shrinks to almost half the weight when cooked so if you want 100g each with your meal, or about 4oz, then you will need 150g each to start with. A human only needs 2oz of meat protein a day so 4oz is a very generous portion. When braising or slow cooking beef, my advice would be to leave the fat on and trim it afterwards as you will loose a mass of flavour if you remove it first. (If you want to lose weight, don't worry too much about fat but reduce overall portion sizes).

I put my meat into the slow cooker at 6.30 in the morning and leave it on until I come home at six and thicken with some instant gravy. It's so tender that the meat comes apart with a spoon. 

I do most of my cooking in either my slow cooker or mini oven. It has drastically reduced my energy bill and I feel great that I'm cutting back on the amount of carbon I'm producing. 

Back to the giveaway - to win a £50 Bonmarche voucher, and this is just for Frugal Queen readers, you need to tweet @queen_frugal warm and cosy #FrugalBonmarche. Good luck - I will randomly draw a tweet on Friday and announce the winner here and on Twitter.

Over to you Dear Reader. Who else rarely uses the 'big oven' any more? Who else is using the halogen? Remorska? mini oven? slow cooker? Who's got one and needed reminding to use it?

Until tomorrow,

Froogs/@queen_frugal