Minced Meat and Beans Sauce

I’m always looking for how to incorporate beans into my children’s food.  I’m glad they are getting to love some of the beans creations like the creamy beans porridge and the ukwa beans…the “beans makes you grow tall” tale is working in my favour.

Minced meat and beans is a combination of minced meat sauce and cooked beans for eating their favourite food like rice, yam, potatoes or plantain. The minced meat comes out in chunky lumps that makes it also perfect to be eaten alone. I earlier made this with kidney beans but decided to try it this time with our more regular black-eyed beans cooked to perfection.

Beans should be well cooked before you start making your sauce and you can change the consistency of your sauce to your liking…fluidy as a sauce for rice or a thicker sauce like mine for eating root foods or to be eaten alone. Beans can be more or less depending on your preference. Add a little if you have a picky eater that will go ga-ga on seeing so much beans in his/her mince (lol).

Minced Meat and Beans Sauce Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1-2 cups cooked black-eyed beans
• 400g minced or ground meat
• 2 large tomatoes
• 1 large carrot
• 2 medium onions
• 1 seasoning cube
• 2 cloves garlic (crushed)
• A small chunk ginger (crushed)
• Thyme
• All purpose seasoning powder
• Basil/scent/nchuanwu/efirin leaves (chopped)
• 1 cooking spoon vegetable oil or oil of choice (I’m now feeling palm oil would have given a better taste)
• 1½ – 2 cups water
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Season minced meat with garlic, ginger, one onion, some seasoning powder and the seasoning cube.  Use your hand to knead it while mixing as this will help it get that chunky texture when cooking. Allow to marinate for at least 20-30 minutes.
2. Blend tomatoes, pepper, carrot and set aside. Heat oil in a sauce pan and fry the other shredded onions for about a minute.
3. Stir in the minced meat and cook till they are all browned. Pour in the blended tomatoes an cook for about 5 minutes before adding 1 or 1½ cups of water. Add seasoning and salt and cover to cook for at least 20 minutes. Top with more water if sauce is getting dry.
4. Stir in the beans and basil leaves, then mix together. Allow to cook for a further 2-5 minutes on low heat while checking for taste.
5. Remove from heat and serve.

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