Vernon WadeThere are lots of cooks out there who actually know what they are doing. I pretty much taught myself to cook, out of necessity. I haven’t a clue most of the time, but I do love to eat. 

I have made everything posted here. If I can do it, you certainly can. Someday, if there is enough interest, I will gather all these recipes into a cookbook. In the meantime, in the spirit of dashes, dollops and three-fingered pinches, I present them here for you to try. Let me know what you think.

Grandma Wade used to make mince meat pies for the holidays. She shared the recipe with Mom,and this delightfully sweet pie has been a treasured memory of mine for decades.

The recipe is pretty labor intensive and contains your entire annual dietary allowance of fat in a single serving.  Mom finally decided not to make any more mince meat pies. I did talk her into spending an afternoon teaching me how to make them, but that was several years ago.

This recipe calls for a metric butt-load of meat. I’m not sure how many pies we made, but the last one came out of the freezer on Thanksgiving. I have been told if I ever want another one, I have to make it myself. Mom suggests reducing the recipe by using a quarter of the ingredients listed below.

Ingredients

 

  • 4# cooked beef or venison (7# raw meat)
  • 2# suet ground
  • 8# apples
  • 2# raisins
  • 2# currents
  • 1 cup vinegar
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 tbs salt
  • 4 cups sugar
  • 1 tsp ground cloves
  • 1 tsp allspice
  • 2 tbs cinnamon

Cook and drain the meat. Grind it in a food processor. Grind apples in the food processor and combine with the ground meat in a large kettle. Add suet, currents, raisins, sugar, spices, vinegar and water. Cover kettle and cook 325 degrees F oven for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally (this sounds like an ideal opportunity to cook outside over coals if you have a Dutch oven that is large enough). If the filling is too dry you can moisten as required with the addition of vinegar, pickle juice or coffee.

Place cooked filling in a 9” pie crust, apply top crust and bake until browned.

%d bloggers like this: