Take 12oz of meat....

I never buy mince if I can help it, preferring instead to buy meat and process it myself. That way, I know what is in it, that it won't contain either fat, gristle or bits of bone, all of which I have found in the past, even in mince from a trusted butcher.

This was designated for chilli, no recipe here as such, as we all have our own. An onion was fried, meat browned, chilli, cocoa, stock cube added plus some cumin. One tin of tomatoes followed, along with some hot stock, 4 frozen cubes of tomato puree, carrots, frozen mushrooms and red kidney beans.

The whole lot was brought to the boil, simmered for 10 minutes then put in my thermal cooker. I'm not sure it is working quite right but anyway, after 6 hours, it was almost done. I put it back on the stove, thickened, adjusted the seasoning and brought it back to the boil. It then went back in the cooker for another hour. It was fully cooked then!

We served up one portion each (using 5oz of uncooked rice as we find that, once cooked, is enough for us both):

Another two portions each was put into those long, foil containers you can buy and frozen. From a meat cost point of view, each portion (6) came to 48p - not too shabby methinks!