STOVIES - recipe needed
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I can cook wonderful food but I just can't make great Stovies like my wee mammy. My wee wee mammy isn't capable of telling me her secrets of stovies - she had a big stroke and as a result has vascular dementia. Bits of her memory part brain don't work very well now. I'm sure people with stovie memories will be be able to help with my STOVIES Quest.
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Stovies are like hash - I expect every mammy has her own 'twist' on it, so it'll probably be a lifetime search! Does she have any contemporaries you can ask for tips?
I make hash using Nigel Slater's recipe in his "Real fast food book" - much like the one here for corn beef hash. Though I also add broccoli and omit eggs. I don't put it under the grill - just cook in the pan.
Then serve with red sauce. Yum.
My mammys' stovies were mostly spuds and onions with some sausage or mince or left over meat tossed in. I am on a quest to find the fabulous flavour thing she done.
My Mammy wasn't a good cook but the few dishes /meals she could cook she done very well. She was a superb almost master baker. Nobody can do pastry like my mammy.
My grandmothers ( and subsequently my mothers ) stovies were always quite a basic recipe; sliced onion, sliced potato (not chopped), salt, pepper and dripping from a particular butcher. I've since added corned beef to my variation, but I have found that its the beef dripping that is the real make or break flavour element.
Chop up a couple of onions, fry until lightly browned in oil (or dripping), mix in minced beef and brown until coloured, add half a dozen quartered potatoes, add a couple of oxo cubes (in the olden days it was some gravy browning) and add some water to cover, a handful of herbs, salt and pepper. Cover pot and cook until most of the water has evaporated and the potatoes are cooked - usually 50-60 mins. Cooking times can vary depending on the variety of potatoes.
I have used a sprinkle of Worcestershire sauce when almost ready to serve.
Serve with carrots, peas or whatever. I like carrots cooked in the pot from halfway through.
onions fried with butter and a crushed beef oxo, then add pre-boiled potatoes and cubed corned beef/leftover mince and mash with a potatoe masher and keep hearing through.
Then add tomato sauce when dished up.
I can't remember onions being involved, but that may be a faulty memory.
I beg to differ. In Scotland that has always been referred to as corned beef hash. Stories have always been leftover roast or minced beef or sausages. Never corned beef.
OK I put my hands up and hang my head in shame at my ignorance!
I have never had to seek out a recipe for stovies having just copied my mother's and adapted it over the years. That's my defence anyhow. ;-)
No apologies needed. I know there's lots of recipes for stovies out there. But I personally have always known hash to be the one containing corned beef. I would say I have corned beef in my hash, not in my stovies. Doesn't mean I'm right though. No worries. No one's died. 😁
All your replies show me that even a wee proud country like Scotland can have 2317 different ways to do Stovies within a 6 mile radius of any given Hoose!
Joking aside, I really appreciate everyone's time and memories.
Sliced tatties and onions, salt and loads of pepper(ground, milled and white), the bit meat, the bit butter, the water or stock..........and then ......... YES ... that's the bit I'm missing!
I'm sure the "bit I'm missing" will be different for about half a million people - these people will realise this when they try make The Stovies.
Thank you Everyone. x