Beef Rostis using Leftovers

In collaboration with Love Food Hate Waste.

These are made from leftovers.  Who wouldn’t want to know how to make something so delicious, and economical, while keeping lots of food waste out of our bins?  You could even win a Slow Cooker with your own tips.  Read on to find out more.

Ok, so what’s the issue?  Did you know that around £260 million pounds worth of beef products are wasted each year in our UK homes?  I know I didn’t.  We might be nation of beef lovers, but that’s a lot of wasted meat.

And that’s not all.  There’s also the half eaten sandwich, unfinished steak in a restaurant, or like some of my extended family members, anything that isn’t eaten on the day, is thrown out and never eaten.

I don’t subscribe to that way of cooking, and many of us are on a budget these days, so it makes sense to use our leftovers and put them to good use.  It’s something I do regularly for my own family.

MEATY ISSUES – WHAT’S THE BEEF?

Love Food Hate Waste is launching the Meaty Issues campaign, where they will share our favourite tips, tricks and left over recipes to help us reduce the amount of beef we throw away  at home saving us money and helping the environment along the way.  Farmer and television presenter Adam Henson will also be talking about how we can do our bit to help get the best from our beef.

RECIPE USING LEFTOVERS WITH SOME ADDED INGREDIENTS

My Tips

• Freeze what you can’t use immediately for another day.  I have frozen banana, cucumber, meat, chicken, soups and much much more waiting to be used.  I especially dislike throwing away beef, as it’s so expensive, and if an animal is providing food for me, I like to use as much of it as I can.
• Make stock from bones to use another day in gravy, soups, stews and casseroles.
• Measure your ingredients and check portion sizes before grabbing things in the shopping aisle.  I find it easier to shop online for many things, as I tend to buy what I need, rather that just grabbing a big bag while the boys are moaning about being in the shop too long.
• Meal planning.  It really does help.  This is one thing I really need to get smarter at, as I tend to over shop and have to freeze lots.
• Recycle.  Having a separate scraps bin really made me take stock of the raw/fresh food that went by way of the bin.  In the days it went into the big bin, I didn’t have a good handle on how much we threw away.  Now I do…..
• If you don’t have enough of one thing, add something else from your cupboard to pad it out.  This is exactly what I did for my Beef Rostis.  I had a pan full of mashed potatoes, when family cancelled supper at the weekend.  I wanted to use them up, along with a packet of beef slices that my mum had asked for, but hadn’t eaten more than one teensy slice from.

BEEF ROSTIS WITH ONION AND MINI SWEET PEPPERS

I had nowhere near enough of any one thing for this recipe, so I just threw a lot of different things together, and out came these lovely beef rostis.  Even my husband was well impressed, and he’s quite a picky eater.

I had a load of mashed potato, so I added enough for a large batch of rostis.  My boys ate two each with some mushy peas for supper, so they were very quickly demolished around here.  I’d make these again, in different varieties.

Ingredients (Makes 10 Rostis)

800g Mashed Potato.
200g Beef, sliced thinly.
200g Onion, finely sliced.
3 Mini Sweet Peppers, sliced and with seeds removed. I used red, yellow and orange.
50g Carrots, sliced and cubed.
Ruskoline Crumb Dressing.
5 Eggs.
Plain Flour.
5ml Rapeseed Oil.

Method

I used my Actifry with the Snacking basket to cook these, but you can easily use a frying pan or even oven cook them too, although I’ve never actually made rostis in the oven.

Step One

Cook your onions with the peppers and carrots in the rapeseed oil, until fully cooked.

Depending on how you cook, you might need a little more oil.  If yours are already cooked leftover vegetables, you can miss out this step.  I sauteed mine in the Actifry.  Try not to let them turn brown as it spoils the look of the Rosti when they’re cut open.  I took around 10 minutes to cook mine.

Step Two

Put your potatoes and beef into a bowl, and add your vegetables and mix thoroughly.

Step Three

Get three dishes, and crack three eggs into one, and whisk them up briskly until mixed.  Put Ruskoline into your second bowl, and plain flour into the third.  You can add more of these as you go, if you need it.  I used 5 eggs in total.

Step Four

Form your mix into slightly smaller than palm sized balls and flatten them, pressing together to firm them up.  They may be a little moist at this point, which is what the flour is for.  Dip each patty into the flour and make sure it is fully coated.  I flour all my rostis first.  When they are all covered in flour, I finish the next two steps for each rosti in turn, covering it with egg, then rolling each one around in the ruskoline until fully coated.  Be warned.  It’s a messy business.  Kids love making these.

Step Five

In my Actifry Snacking Basket, these took around 5 minutes for mine to be thoroughly hot.  You could shallow fry yours or oven bake on a moderate heat for around 20 minutes, or until fully hot inside.

Now pop on over to Love Food Hate Waste and add your own tips…