How to Make Steak & Kidney Pudding

I have a dream. I have a dream that, one day, I will find a good source of Steak & Kidney Puddings in Canada.

Until that day arrives I will just have to make my own. And that is just what I did today. It's quite a challenge to sit at the keyboard writing this post with a huge steak pud inside me.

Home-made puddings tend to be heavy. Heavier than the type of pudding you buy at a "chippie" in the north of England.

So, if you want one of those "come hungry" type of meals then have I got a recipe for you.

Ingredients

• 1 pack Atora Light Vegetable Suet
• 1/2 Kg McDougall's Self-Raising Flour
• 1/2 Kg boneless stewing steak
• Small amount of chopped kidney
• 1 Oxo cube
• Salt, pepper

Preparation

• Rub the flour and suet together until the texture is smooth
• Add 1 cup of water and mix thoroughly
• Roll the dough on a floured board to make circles about 15cm in diameter
• Press some aluminum foil into a small dessert bowl with a broad overlapping fringe
• Press the rolled dough into the bowl on top of the foil
• Brown the steak in a little oil in a frying pan then throw in a pinch of flour, a crumbled Oxo cube and a couple of tablespoons of water. Stir to make a gravy
• Put the meat and gravy inside the dough and wrap the dough tightly around the meat.
• Wrap the foil tightly around the dough and remove from the dessert bowl
  
• Place the pudding into a large pan of gently boiling water and simmer for 2 hours. Keep the pudding half-immersed in the water and top up with water from a kettle as necessary
  
• Serve with more gravy and Batchelor's mushy peas

John's Notes
Instead of aluminum foil you could use the more traditional method of wrapping the pudding in cloth to make a "rag pudding".

I tried in vain to find a "pudding bowl" in my local stores. Pudding bowls are deep with steeply sloping sides and make an excellent mould for a pudding. If you have a pudding bowl you can line the walls with dough, add the meat then make a flat dough lid for the pudding. Seal the top of the bowl with foil and put the bowl into the boiling water to cook.

If you are not a fan of kidney you can substitute onion or mushrooms - or even just make a plain old steak pudding.

How to Make Pudding Pastry

There's nothing like a steaming hot pudding on a cold day to bring the colour back to your cheeks and give you that nice full feeling around the waistline.

The British Are The World's Pudding Masters
The British are surely the world's pudding masters. A pudding in Canada is usually a light dessert made with milk, but in Britain there are more varieties of pudding than you can shake a wooden spoon at.

The secret of a truly great British pudding is in the pastry. Pudding pastry is a heavy mix of flour and suet. You can substitute suet with other kinds of fat (e.g. butter or lard) but you won't get the authentic flavour of a good traditional British pud.

Blighty's Britfood Tips wrote about suet recently in our post "How to Use Atora Suet". Today we'll discuss a recipe using Atora suet. Unfortunately, regular Atora beef suet isn't allowed to enter Canada so we'll be using Atora Light Vegetable Suet instead. But look on the bright side, Atora Light Vegetable Suet tastes every bit as good as traditional beef suet yet it contains 25% less fat.

Suet Pastry For Steamed and Boiled Puddings
Ingredients:

• 250g McDougall's plain flour (use All Purpose Flour if you can't find McDougalls)
• 125g Atora Light Vegetable Suet
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt

Preparation:

• Mix the flour and suet together in a large bowl
• Add the baking powder and salt and mix again
• Add sufficient cold water to turn the dry ingredients into a stiff ball of dough
• For desserts (e.g. Spotted Dick, Treacle Pudding) keep the dough in a ball and add whatever other ingredients the recipe calls for.
  
• For filled meat puddings, knead and roll the dough on a floured board.

Caution: never prepare suet pastry in advance, especially if you plan to store it in the refrigerator, you should always use it immediately and keep it at room temperature. Make it right and good traditional suet pastry will make your puddings memorable!

Footnote: Blighty's British Recipes mailing list subscribers recently received a recipe for Steak & Kidney Pudding using this pastry. Steak & Kidney puddings are a staple for many British people, especially in the northwest of England, but are nearly impossible to get in Canada.