Don’t judge a book by its cover. Or, as our resident butcher STEVE BAIN writes, a chook by its discards.
Using meat that some might discard ticks the ‘sustainability’ box, but you’ll find that it tastes just like chicken.
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While there is a recipe list of ingredients in this edition’s Home Butchery, there is no cooking. That comes later.
You can use any type of meat for this preparation. Chicken offal — think giblets, hearts, maybe a small number of livers — has been used in this example because an aspect of the concept is that you can take smaller items and craft them into a bigger amount of filling. The secret to the success of this production process starts with the meat.
Chop the meat up into small pieces and work it until it becomes sticky. Then ingredients are added one at a time (sort of), ensuring that the mixture never becomes too dry, nor too wet. Either too dry, or too wet and the mixture will fall apart and/or will ooze out of the pastry. It may also make the pastry very soggy and end up as a mess in your air fryer.
Ingredients are added so that they are at less risk of causing a mix that is too “sloppy”. One way of doing this is to premix your wettest and driest ingredients, so you can get the consistency about right before you blend it into the main meat mixture. An example might be that you mix all of your dry ingredients into the oyster sauce so that it becomes stickier than honey, then mix this into the massaged meat.
Massaging the meat motivates the proteins in the meat into a state where they bond better, to each other and the added ingredients. When done with the correct ratios, you will be able to make a mixture that doesn’t require any binding agents. Notwithstanding this, to save yourself from having to order take-away if it all goes wrong, it is a good idea to have some eggs and/or breadcrumbs handy when making the mix. Beaten egg can help the ingredients hold together in the mixture (the beaten egg will be used in the construction of the rolls). Breadcrumbs help dry a too-wet mixture while also acting as a binder. Like in the oyster sauce example, you can mix breadcrumbs (panko, wholemeal, home-made, any type really) together before adding it to the mix. Oyster sauce is a preferred choice because it is ‘gluggy’ at room temperature and doesn’t lose all of its viscosity when heated. Crafting a good filling is an art, not a science.
Handy hint: if the mixture is way too wet, forego the breadcrumbs and use cornflour.
By the way, those rissoles that Australia is well known for, they often contained both carrots and onions. Our forebears knew something that we could use ... grated carrots and onions both act as binding agents while adding flavour and nutrition. I’ve done a few nutrition courses in my personal trainer studies and therefore I feel I can offer the advice that a couple of serves of vegetables added to your dinner (or snack) is a good thing.
My grandmother took my wife aside after our wedding and showed her how she hid my vegetables in the rissoles that she served me. Now our daughter hides/incorporates all manner of vegetables in our grandkids’ lasagne.
Mince/filling Ingredients
Chicken hearts, 100 grams per person
1 small carrot, grated
1 diced white onion
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika (sweet or smoked)
½ tsp dried thyme
2 dessert spoons of oyster sauce
Process
Prelim: Soak the hearts in water in the fridge for at least an hour to aid the first step.
There’s 100g of heart meat in this lot of ingredients in the photo. Portion control wise, this is a perfect serving for one person.
The sticky sauce ingredients as shown will ‘treat’ about half of the 100g of meat (so double what is in the photos).
Step 1: squeeze the ‘soaked’ hearts to remove any fluid (and/or coagulated blood) from inside the ‘tubes’.
Step 2: split the hearts in half to open them up and make them flat so that they are easier to chop into mince.
Step 3: there’s about 100g (one serving) here in the photo.
Step 4: chop the hearts into smaller mince-sized pieces. Remove any hard bits and discard, then work the meat to stimulate the binding proteins.
Step 5: add carrots and gently work the mixture in with your (clean) hands.
Step 6: add diced onion and again, work the mixture.
Step 7: add half of the dry flavourings (half of the quantity listed in the ingredients) to one dessert spoon of the oyster sauce.
Step 8: stir the sticky sauce to blend the ingredients.
Step 9: add the meat to the enhanced oyster sauce, a small amount at a time. I use about half of the meat mixture per batch. Any time you add something, work the mixture a little. Using only half of the meat mixture allows you to add a little extra meat, carrots and onion if the mixture gets too wet in your mixing bowl. Stop adding the sticky sauce to the meat when the meat mixture is at a consistency where it still holds together. Put the finished mixture aside in the fridge. It will bind a little more while in the coolness of the fridge. Another way of saying all this is to stop adding sticky sauce before the meat mixture falls apart.
Steve Bain