Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Today, I heart beef.

It's lunch time. In my office, I'm known to eat my lunch way before anyone else. Which means I have the beef in beer that I made last night digesting in my belly! De-li-cious it was! The meat was tender and falling apart, the flavours complemented one another perfectly, and I wished that I was at home instead of eating out of a microwavable container so that I could go back for seconds.

There was one part of the recipe that I left out yesterday: dumplings. I love dumplings, but when it came to making them, I was a dumpling virgin. At first I thought about leaving them out, then my adventurous side pushed me forward. As I looked at the recipe for the dumplings, I realized I was ignorant to yet another ingredient: suet. Trusty old Google let me know that it's raw beef or mutton fat. Um, can I substitute that with vegetable oil? Here is the version I came up with, if you're a dumpling connoisseur, please don't try this at home, you'll likely search me down and give me a smack for this attempt:

3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup vegetable oil
a pinch of salt
2 tbsp chopped parsley
4tbsp water

Mix that up and roll it into little balls. When your meat has been in the oven for an hour and a half, drop the dumplings in, recover and let cook for another half hour.

1 comment:

  1. You don't want to have anything to do with suet--I used it last week and it grossed me out, and I'm not squeamish about ingredients! I always use butter and buttermilk in dumplings.
    :)

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