Video:How to Make Christmas Mincemeat

Transcript:How to Make Christmas Mincemeat

Hi, I'm Elaine Lemm for About.com and today I'm going to show you how to make Christmas Mincemeat from the British and Irish food site.

Ingredients for Christmas Mincemeat

• 175g raisins
• 110g sultanas
• 275g currants
• 110g candied, mixed peel, finely chopped
• 175g shredded suet (beef or vegetarian)
• 250g soft, dark brown sugar
• Half tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 tsp mixed spice
• Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
• 1 cooking apple, cored and finely chopped, no need to peel
• 4 tbsp brandy

Instructions for Making Christmas Mincemeat

To make the Christmas Mincemeat you'll need to start the day before. What you need is a large baking bowl and into there we're going to put all the ingredients except the brandy. And then we mix all the ingredients together. Once all those ingredients are really well mixed together, then cover the bowl with a clean tea cloth. Now this needs to be left overnight to allow all of those lovely flavours to develop together.

Additional Instructions for Christmas Mincemeat

Next morning put this into a very low oven at about 110 degrees Celsius, covered with aluminium foil, and just let it cook there for 2 to 2 and a half hours and this is going to create the sugar and suet and everything all melting together to create the mincemeat.

So the mincemeat has had two and a half hours in a very low oven. I've left it to go cold and you can see in here, this is just gorgeous, all sticky with all the melted sugar and the suet all brought together. The thing that it needs now is some brandy. And it's now ready to go in the jam jars. We just fill them all the way to the top, pop the lid on. Now ideally you would keep this for two to three months before you made your mince pies, but really, if you can't wait that long, it's actually quite nice right now.

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