Scottish Stovies - A Winter Comfort food

Greetings Foodies

Yesterday I went to visit my grandmother who is currently 83 years old and living in a care home.

At this time of year when I visit her I like to cook a simple traditional Scottish winter comfort food which we call "stovies"

This is a simple dish consisting of potatoes, butter, onions, gravy and corned beef.Some people will often add carrots and swede which would make this dish even more nourishing. In some cases, people will also add a little dark beer like Guinness or Sweetheart Stout to the gravy and serve it to their friends around New Year time.

For this batch, I used only the essential ingredients, potatoes, butter, onions, gravy and corned beef.

First of all we slowly boil the potatoes until they are nice and soft and easy to mash.I like to keep the potato skins on and drain of the remaining water before mashing the potatoes.

I picked up some of this lovely west country butter to use in various recipes over the holidays.

Let's add a nice big tablespoon of butter to the potatoes and get them mashed.

Next up I cut up half of an onion and let it saute until the onions become translucent. Once the onions are ready we can go ahead and add them to the mashed potatoes.

Now lets make some gravy...

A couple of tablespoons of gravy granules and a cup of water...

Add half of a tin of corned beef...

Break the corned beef into chunks...

Let the gravy boil until the corned beef is completely broken up. This stuff tastes divine and is also wonderful to use in other dishes like poured over fried rice, used as a sauce on top of a burger, hotdog, or nice bit of steak.

Now all we need to do is add our magic corned beef gravy to our buttered potatoes and onions and there we have it , a wonderfully satisfying winter dish!