A Hearty Corned Beef Soup

Corned Beef Soup by The Fat Foodie

The weather’s been overcast and freezing for days now, requiring us to put the heating on to combat the thick layer of thorn-like crisp frost that’s coating the world outside. It seems weird to feel so chilly when it’s only late November, but the other day I decided something warming would have to be on the cards for lunch after nipping out to bring in my frozen washing (which I had to break as if it was made of strong cardboard in order to fit it back in the washing basket).

I had a rummage around in the fridge and cupboards, but no inspiration struck. However, a glance in the freezer unearthed a carton of Mum’s family-famous corned beef soup, a hearty meal-in-a-bowl that’s guaranteed to warm a person up from the inside out. As Mum would say, her corned beef soup is a soup that really ‘sticks to your ribs’.

I remember having this soup one evening in late autumn when I was a young teenager. We lived in Dumfries and Galloway (the part of Scotland with the highest rainfall level on a yearly basis) and on this particular day my Dad had swung by in the car after he’d finished work to pick me and my brother up from school on his way home because the rain was so heavy that it was falling to the pavement and then bouncing back up to knee level. After relishing the warmth of the car we arrived home and, after changing out of our sodden school uniform and getting into our nightwear and dressing gowns, we joined Mum and Dad in the kitchen for dinner. The relief and excitement I felt when I realised that we were having Mum’s amazing hot corned beef soup for dinner was overwhelming and I remember feeling sorry for some of my friends whose fathers demanded a full, roasted meat-centric dinner every evening and being wholeheartedly grateful that I was blessed with a family that could come together over a simple cooking pot full of soup.

One question I get asked all the time is what low FODMAP stock I use because a lot of the stock cubes which are on the supermarket shelves contain onion and/or garlic. Some people who eat a low FODMAP diet can find that their systems are okay with a small amount of onion and garlic, such as the quantity found in stock cubes. However, others cannot tolerate it in their diets at all. There are a couple of options if you’re very sensitive to onion or garlic though.

The first is Massel ‘s Vegetable Stock Cubes which are completely free of onion or garlic. I’ve tried this stock and it’s quite nice and it certainly does the job well. The second option is Casa de Sante’s low FODMAP Vegetable Stock Powder which is my preferred choice because I like the background herbiness it brings to meals. It’s also officially certified by FODMAP Friendly. If you’d like, you can buy either of these options online by clicking on the names of the products.

Corned beef soup is really easy to make and it’s packed full of flavour. You can adapt the vegetables to suit whatever you have on-hand to use up in the fridge. For instance, if you have them to use up, turnip, the green tops of leeks and parsnips work well in this recipe. It’s perfect served with a generous slice (or two) of nice, fresh, yeasty bread slathered in plenty of good salted butter.

As a rule, I don’t really like brown sauce, but in this case I can highly recommend adding a little dollop of HP Sauce to your bowl, as evidenced in the photo, because it adds a lovely deep, fruity, vinegary note to the soup. Regardless of whether you add the HP sauce to your bowl or not, as my Mum would say, after a bowl of this soup ‘your cockles will soon be warmed up’.

Ingredients:

2 tins of good quality corned beef

3 large carrots

3 potatoes

2 or 3 gluten-free vegetable stock cubes (to taste) (I use Casa de Sante’s low FODMAP Vegetable Stock Powder)

1.5 litres of hot water

Method:

Chop up your vegetables into bite-sized pieces (or grate them) and put them in a large soup pot.

Add enough hot water so it just covers the vegetables and bring to the boil.

Chop up your corned beef and add it to the pot.

Simmer gently until your veg is cooked and then add the stock cubes one at a time, tasting after stirring each one in to make sure you don’t over-season the soup. (You might not need all 3 stock cubes, depending on your personal taste.)

After simmering it for a wee while longer serve it with good gluten-free bread and butter.

Corned Beef Soup by The Fat Foodie





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Parmesan Hasselback Potatoes (serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side)

Parmesan Hasselback Potatoes by The Fat Foodie

Parmesan Hasselback Potatoes by The Fat Foodie

In the past few months I’ve discovered a great food blog called Cooking Without Limits which focuses on lovely recipes and gorgeous food photography. She recently put up a blog post on half Hasselback potatoes which inspired me to have a bash at creating my own variation, parmesan Hasselback potatoes.

Hasselback potatoes are a Swedish baked potato dish which looks really stunning and tastes fantastic, incorporating thinly sliced, crisp, buttery fanned out wedges of potato with whatever you choose to season them with. Although they are delicious with a simple addition of salt, if you add rosemary and parmesan cheese it truly lifts them up to the level of sublime.

Although they look tricky to make, they’re actually surprisingly easy to prepare and you could make parmesan hasselback potatoes with sweet potatoes if you had a mind to. I made them to accompany a dinner of chicken en croute, but you could serve them with any meal that you would normally serve roast potatoes with. Actually, if you added crispy shards of smoked bacon, chilli flakes and sour cream you’d have the makings of a very satisfying main meal in itself.

I made my hasselback potatoes with a sprinkling of rosemary and a generous topping of parmesan shavings and they were divine, producing forkfuls of butter-toasted soft potato with a well-seasoned, cheesy crust. Although I made mine with little new potatoes you could easily make them with large baking potatoes too. It’d probably make one of the fanciest, but tastiest baked potatoes you’ve ever eaten!

I’d strongly encourage you to try making these parmesan hasselback potatoes because once you’ve mastered them they’re a great addition to your repertoire and instantly make any meal look enticing and more polished overall. Imagine your family’s faces when you produce a batch of these golden brown wee tatties to go with their roast chicken on Sunday!

Ingredients:

New potatoes (I make 3-4 potatoes per person as a side or 4-6 per person as a main dish)

1 tsp of salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp finely chopped rosemary (dried or fresh, but you might need a bit more if using fresh)

3 tbsps. melted butter or vegetable oil

75g finely grated parmesan

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/Gas mark 4.

Wash (but don’t peel) all of your potatoes and skewer them horizontally through their middles with a kebab skewer. (You can put more than one potato on each skewer.)

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How To Skewer Your Potatoes

Lay the skewered potatoes on a chopping board and cut through each of them until your knife meets the skewer. Once you’ve done them all, flip the skewer over and repeat on the other side of the potatoes.

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How To Cut The Potatoes

Put the potatoes on a large baking tray and brush the potatoes generously all over with melted butter, reserving some of the butter to use halfway through their cooking process. But don’t worry if you use up all of the butter before baking them because you can always use more butter, right?

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Parmesan Hasselback Potatoes Ready For The Oven

Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle on the rosemary and then put them in the oven for about 25 mins.

After this initial 25 minutes of cooking the potato slices will have started to fan out, so take the potatoes out of the oven and give them another brushing with melted butter. Put them back in the oven for another 20-30 mins.

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Parmesan Hasselback Potatoes by The Fat Foodie

Once the potatoes are cooked and have soft interiors and golden brown skins, take them out, sprinkle the parmesan cheese over them and put them back in the oven for a few minutes to let the cheese melt and go crispy.

Carefully remove the skewers (they’re roasting hot!) and serve.

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Dinner by The Fat Foodie!

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Sausages and Mash (serves 4)

Sausages and Mash by The Fat Foodie

Sausages and Mash by The Fat Foodie

For all that I enjoy cooking new and interesting meals, sometimes it’s the simple old favourites that really hit the spot. One meal that undoubtedly falls into this category is sausages and mash.

A while ago I bought a pack of really good quality gluten-free butchers sausages from Marks and Spencer, but I froze them because the weather was too nice at the time for a hearty dinner such as sausages and mash. However, the leaves on the trees are not only starting to turn colour on the branches, they’re voluntarily free-falling to the ground to be crunched underfoot as we move throughout our day. This, to me, means it’s time to start revisiting classic recipes which have seen our elders through the cold, but cosy, evenings of autumn.

My initial plan for the sausages had been to slice them and put them through a pasta dish, but when I remembered that I still had some of my home-grown potatoes to use up I decided to make sausages and mash. As much as I adore good, lightly whipped mashed potato with a generous quantity of butter lovingly folded through it, sometimes it needs to be made a little bit more exciting so when I realised I had a leek in the fridge I figured it’d go very nicely with the mash. And the use of the green tips of spring onions instead of a normal white onion also added a sharp sweetness to the mash which complemented the green tips of the leeks.

Sometimes it’s easy to overlook the old meals our elder family members cooked for us in the past, but I think they’re just as important to our approach to food as trying new recipes from countries far away from our own. These ‘classics’ help us to retain our link with our past, both in terms of our forebears and the landscape we lived within, and I’d even go so far as to say that I think they can contribute towards our sense of self. I, for one, know that my grandmothers will be looking down and heartily approving of my offering of a sensible plate of sausages and mash with rich gravy.

Ingredients:

8 gluten-free sausages (or, if you’re feeling particularly bold, you could even make your own with a homemade sausage maker!)

1 bag of new potatoes (cut into equal sized pieces)

50g green leek tips (thinly sliced) – only the green tips of a leek are low FODMAP

30g of green spring onion tips (thinly sliced) – only the green tips of a spring onion are low FODMAP

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

Salt and pepper

60g butter (or non-dairy version)

A splash of rice milk

Gluten-free gravy granules

40g celery (finely sliced)

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Method:

Preheat the oven for your sausages.

Put your potatoes in a large pan of salted water and bring to the boil.

While the potatoes are boiling put the leek greens and spring onion tips in another pan along with the tbsp. of oil and gently cook until soft.

Place your sausages in a baking tray, add the celery and a little water and cook the sausages in the oven until done.

When your potatoes are soft drain them. Mash the potatoes and then add the leek and spring onion mix along with a generous amount of butter and a splash of rice milk to it. Mash it all together and then taste it, adding salt and pepper and any more butter if you’d like.

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Make a jug of thick gravy and add the celery that cooked alongside the sausages (and the sausage juices too, if you’re feeling naughty!)

Serve a nice big dollop of creamy mash on each plate with a couple of sausages and a generous drizzle of rich gravy. I’d recommend a little spoonful of sharp wholegrain mustard on the side too.

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Pork Burgers with Crispy Potatoes (Serves 4-6)

Pork Burgers with Crispy Potatoes

Pork Burgers with Crispy Potatoes by The Fat Foodie

It would not surprise me if the people who read my blog harboured the impression that I am a vegetarian because of the amount of veggie dishes I cook and write about, but the truth is, I really enjoy good meat. When I say ‘good meat’ I mean meat that’s of a high quality and not really processed.

The other day I fancied making a really good burger and although ordinarily I’d use beef mince, I had a pack of pork mince in the freezer so I figured I’d have a bash at making pork burgers with crispy potatoes on the side. I have to say, as much as I enjoy a beefburger, I could be a convert! The pork burger kept its moisture during the cooking process much better than a beefburger normally does and it took on the flavours of the seasonings I added to it very well.

The pork burgers were incredibly easy to make and the flavour possibilities you could make with them are endless (sage and chive, smoked paprika and red pepper, and ground cumin and fresh coriander leaf are a few which spring to mind). I served mine in a soft gluten-free bun with some crispy potatoes on the side. Give this a try and see if you convert too.

Ingredients:

500g pork mince

1 tsp asafoetida powder

1 ½ tsps. paprika

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

4-6 soft burger buns

4-6 large potatoes

2 tbsps. of vegetable oil

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/Gas 4.

In a large bowl mix the asafoetida powder, paprika, salt and pepper into your pork mince.

Form 4-6 patties with the mince by hand (depending on how big you want your burgers to be) or you could use a burger press to form the patties, and place them on a baking tray. If you find your mixture is too dry to pack together then feel free to add 1 egg into it to help bind the mixture.

Cut your potatoes into cubes or wedges, place on a baking tray, coat in the oil and sprinkle with salt. You could add 1 tsp of smoked paprika to your wedges too if you’d like them to have a smokey taste.

Put both baking trays in the oven and bake until your pork burgers are fully cooked in the middle and your potatoes are soft when speared with a fork.

Put the burgers in their buns and build your burger, adding cheese, lettuce, tomato, jalapeños, mayo, ketchup etc. as desired.

Serve with the crispy potatoes and get stuck in!

Pork Burgers with Crispy Potatoes by The Fat Foodie

Pork Burgers with Crispy Potatoes by The Fat Foodie

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