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.

How to Use Atora Suet

Shredded suet is a very British cooking ingredient - but it was actually invented by a Frenchman!

Suet has been used as an ingredient of British puddings since at least the early 17th Century. In the early days the preparation of suet was a very lengthy process. The fat had to be removed from the animal carcass, boiled with water to remove impurities, then boiled some more and finally it had to be cut into pieces suitable for use in baked or steamed puddings.

The introduction of shredded suet (by the Frenchman who lived in Manchester, UK) saved cooks a lot of trouble. Shredded suet is an everyday household ingredient for many British dishes today. Canada has banned the import of meat products from the UK but Atora light Vegetable Suet is readily available in British import stores like Blighty's Tuck Store. In one sense that is a blessing because vegetable suet is not only suitable for vegeterians, but it also contains 25% less fat which makes it healthier too.

Fact
Atora makes enough shredded suet in its factory in the north-east of England to make one million dumplings a day!

Atora provides a lot of recipes and helpful information on its website at www.atora.co.uk, including these great tips for better results:

• Always use one part suet to two parts flour for pastry, dumplings and puddings.
• Never leave uncooked dumplings standing, cook immediately for best results.
• Always simmer dumplings - do not boil, otherwise the mixture will break up.
• For extra light dumplings never open the lid during cooking.
• When making pastry, always use suet at room temperature for best results.
• Before cooking baked suet dishes, always make sure the oven is preheated to the correct temperature.
• Fill pudding basins only two-thirds full to allow room for expansion.
• When steaming puddings make sure the water is boiling before the pudding is placed in the steamer or pan. Always top up the level with boiling water from a kettle.
• Cover puddings with a double layer of foil, sealing the edges well. To allow room for the pudding to expand during cooking, fold a pleat in the foil before covering.