Mincemeat Recipe and a New Giveaway

The winner of this past week's giveaway is: bev@bevsbackporch! I will ship it out on Monday!

This week's giveaway is for a basket filled with maple syrup, two jams from Stonewall Kitchen, maple leaf cookies, asst. chocolates from Harbor Sweets and a few other treats. To enter: leave a comment on this post. If you are not already a follower, sign on to follow! The winner will be announced next Saturday.


December 4th


A moose eggnog mug from the movie, 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'.


I have managed to do a bit of decorating but I am really behind.


Hopefully today I will put up a tree.


The mincemeat lineup.


I always use a vintage grinder to get the right consistency for my mincemeat. Everything should be as uniform as possible.

From the top going clockwise: Ground walnuts, golden raisins, ground cranberries, ground orange and lemon peel, ground Granny Smith apples, dried cranberries, raisins.


Next I add chopped dates, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar and demarara sugar.


Add 8 0z. of ground suet. Suet is the fat that comes off the belly of the cow. You could use lard, crisco or even butter but nothing quite imparts the flavor that you get when using suet. This is the same fat which is used in plum puddings. As the suet renders, it coats all of the fruit and gives it a satiny texture.


And a cup of port wine. If you want a boozier mincemeat, add some brandy or whiskey.


Stir this together and cook at 225 degrees for 3 hours until the suet has rendered and coated all the fruit.


It turns a nice dark brown color and the house smells like Christmas.


I also added 4 cups of currants. These do not need to be ground as they are already the size of the other ingredients. I added these late because I needed to run to the store to buy them. They should be added along with all the other ingredients.


This can be made up to a month ahead of time.


I made 4 quarts. Tomorrow I will be making the mincemeat tarts and will show them on here soon.