“That’s not how she made it,” said my mum of my attempt to recreate my nana’s tater ash recipe. “She wouldn’t have garlic in the house.”
My mum is someone who has brewed fewer cups of tea than Phil Neville, doesn’t know how to scramble an egg, and crucially, has never rustled up a bowl of tater ash in her life.
“And she wouldn’t use Worcester sauce, either,” she added with an air of misplaced triumph, despite being wrong about both assertions.
Tater ash is Manchester in a bowl. The ultimate Mancunian comfort food.
Similar to Irish stew and scouse, but mostly confined to the second city, tater ash is the type of meal pub landlords serve during the break at darts and pool league games, but never put on menus. It’s almost as if charging for it would be an affront to its history as a cheap, working class staple, born from mills, muck and mire.
Everybody loves tater ash. It’s one of the few meaty cravings my veggie and vegan friends have. Not because it’s the tastiest dish in the world, but because of the warmth the entire city has for it. The memories of eating it are indelible, the aromas wafting from kitchens with whistling stove-top kettles forever in our nostrils. But the number of people making it is ebbing away. At twenty-one, my youngest brother is half my age, and has never tasted it. We can’t let it vanish.
Before going any further, though, we need to clarify some important matters. This isn’t potato hash. This isn’t the swanky corned beef hash you’ll find at Albert’s Chop House, with its poached egg crown and slithers of bacon draped across like Bobby Charlton’s hair. This recipe doesn’t have a thin lid of spuds spooled across the top like an edible thatch — that’s a hot pot.
No, this is the same tater ash handed down through generations of my family. My great gran, Nana Meg, passed it on to Nana Narky (real name Doreen), who was so busy looking after everybody that she forgot to teach my mum how to make it. Fortunately for me, and by extension, you, Nana Meg showed me the ropes.
I was eighteen and wanted to make a meat and potato pie for a first anniversary meal with my girlfriend. Meg scoffed at the idea. “Your hands are too hot,” she said, shooing me aside. “You’ll ruin the pastry. Let’s make tater ash instead.”
That suited me. And my girlfriend. We’ve been married for eighteen years.
The ingredients are the same as her meat and potato pie. If you want the perfect filling for one, just follow the instructions below but keep the lid off the pan, boil the contents right down, and entomb what’s left inside some pastry. Just make sure you put your hands in the fridge for an hour first.
TATER ASH RECIPE
Serves: 4
Prep: 10m
Cooking: 1 hour minimum
Ingredients
· 1 onion, diced
· 2 medium potatoes, cut to 1” cubes
· 3 medium carrots, sliced thick
· 4 garlic cloves, minced
· 500g diced beef
· 1 beef stock cube
· 1 tbsp flour
· 1 tbsp Bisto
· 1 tbsp oil of your choice
· 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce/Hendo’s
· 3 tbsp brown sauce
· Salt & pepper
· Bread, pickled beetroot and/or red cabbage to serve
Method
· In the deepest pan you’ve got, brown your meet in oil for a few minutes. Once done, put it on a plate to one side.
· Add the onion, soften it for a few minutes before adding garlic for another minute.
· Put the beef back in. Cover with a layer of flour. Add carrots and potatoes, give it all a stir.
· Dissolve stock cube in 1 litre of boiling water, and pour over mixture.
· Using 250ml of boiling water, do the same with the Bisto. My mother-in-law baulks at this stage, although to be fair, it’s the only thing I use it for.
· If needed, top up the pan with more water so that it covers everything.
· Chuck in a load of ground black pepper and a pinch of salt.
· Add the brown sauce, Worcester sauce/Hendo’s. It’s difficult to put too much in, but the amounts above should do the job.
· Cover for an hour on a low heat, stirring occasionally to stop the meat sticking to the bottom of the pan.
· Dish up with some pickled beetroot and/or pickled red cabbage on the top, with bread for dipping and mopping up duties.
Can you freeze tater ash?
Absolutely, but leave it to ‘mature’ overnight before doing so, as tater ash is always even tastier the next day. That said, it’s not often we freeze any as we’ll have it for our tea one day and our dinner the next.
