 Hello, in today's video I'm going to be sharing with you the most amazing, the easiest minced meat pie filling recipe ever. Traditionally minced meat that's used for Christmas minced pies is a mixture of chopped dried fruit with some sort of vegetable fat like vegetable suet. This tends to cause some indigestion but my recipe that I am sharing with you today is quite unique in the fact that it uses a large amount of cooking apples which gives it that nice pulpy look so you are eliminating the fat that can cause indigestion. I have to give you a warning though at this point that the minced pies that you'll make using this filling are so moreish that you will probably keep on eating them non-stop so you have been warned. The minced meat itself you can eat it straight after you've made it but really it tastes a lot better when you let it mature for at least a year then it is banging. You will need some bramley cooking apples, you're gonna need some sultanas, you could use raisins if you want to or currants, optional but not necessary. Glace cherries, light brown sugar, a lemon, mixed spice, cinnamon, Captain Morgan's rum or brandy. Depending on what tickles your fancy. We'll also need a bottle of cider this is our own homemade cider that we're using. Done the equipment includes a peeler, chopping board, scales and a huge stockpot to boil your minced meat in. You'll also want to gather together your bottles that you're actually going to be using for the jarring. I reuse old glass jars from things that I have bought. Make sure that your glass jars have got a wide mouth it makes life a lot easier. First step is to peel and core those apples. We're gonna remove the apple peel. You may want to save your apple peel for the compost bin or to make your very own apple cider vinegar. I've included this section in case you've never cored and peeled any apples before and to also give you an idea of what size of apple chunks you are going for. Of course you can make the apple chunks a little bit thicker if you want to but bear in mind that this will affect the texture of the mince meat. It will still be delicious it's just that you may have thicker chunks of pulpy apple. So that's kind of the size that we're going for in order to recreate the mince pies in this video. Life is so much easier whenever you're cooking something when you can gather all of your ingredients and prepare them together before you start the cooking. So for this tutorial I'm actually preparing every single ingredient before I start cooking it. The next thing is to do the apple, the lemon zest. So with lemon zest I prefer actually using the handheld zest I wish creates this lovely little curls of lemon zest. We're gonna slice up sage lemon, squish it, squish the jinkers out of it to get the lemon juice. Mix that in with your lemon zest and that's gonna go in and give all of that goodness. You're optional but not necessary extra cherries just get those out and basically dice them as thick as you can bear them. I like them to add specks of little color because they still maintain their lovely red color like teeny tiny little jewels inside your mince pies. So we're now actually ready to do some cooking so you want to pop open your bottle of cider, measure it out and then you're gonna take it over to the stock pot to get started. The first step is to melt to dissolve the sugar within the cider itself. You don't want to boil it because you don't want your alcohol to completely evaporate and you don't want to burn your sugar either. So medium heat is recommended until you can no longer see the sugar crystals. This is where using soft brown sugar comes in handy because it does have a tendency to dissolve a heck of a lot quicker than say for instance demerara. Apart from the fact that soft brown sugar in all of my years of making this recipe is the best one for imparting the best flavor. So that's what it would look like once everything has melted. You should have a nice lovely foam on the top and you're just gonna bung everything in except for the alcohol which will give you time to have a little bit of a tipple. First thing to go in is the apple. So we're gonna let the apples sit in there for about five minutes. Just enough time for it to absorb some of the cider. Now the fun part begins. Once we've had the five minutes for the apple to absorb we're going to add some cinnamon and mixed spice and whatever else really tickles your fancy but for me this is the ultimate one. So we're gonna do a teaspoon of the cinnamon and a teaspoon of the mixed spice and we're just gonna mix it in there. Add in the optional but not necessary cherries followed by the lemon with the lemon zest in there and just stir it in. You're just gonna make one big lovely mash and by this point it does smell really delicious. The quintessential smell of Christmas. Now you're gonna grab your juicy dried fruit and you're gonna add it in and stir it in ever so gently. Be careful not to splash any of that hot fluid on you. Mix it all until everything has been coated in the fluid and that's it. You just leave it now to bubble away for about a half an hour whilst it simmers and pulps and the apple gets really nice and pulpy. Eventually it will absorb the brown color of the soft brown sugar and the cider and it will get to a point where you won't be able to distinguish the apple itself and they should take between 30 to 45 minutes on a medium heat. We don't want it boiling because if it boils you risk scorching it at the bottom of your pan. Keep it on a medium heat and keep on stirring all the time to ensure that it doesn't burn. I forgot to collect the footage showing me actually adding the brandy into this mix so I went with the brandy because I think it creates a better flavor that way and I used a half a cup of brandy in there. So once you've prepared your jars by sterilizing them whether that's in boiling water or in the oven, my preferred choice is the oven, you are going to put your nice warm lovely juicy mints meat into the jar and a little piece of baking parchment or wax paper goes a long way towards keeping them nice and fresh. Pop the lid on and make sure you tighten it. Let it sit on that cooling rack for a while until you hear this lovely popping sound which signifies that the vacuum seal has been created. As I mentioned in the beginning these taste amazing if you let them mature for a while. If possible try and make them a couple of months beforehand. They'll still taste good but give them time and they will taste even better. Always label your jars. I can't tell you how many times I forgot to label them and I have paid the price so make sure you label your jar of mints meat and then once you've labeled them if you are going to keep them in storage you want to keep them out of direct sunlight in a nice cool dark place. In our case it's the basement in our cupboard of all the preserves that we make in all of the Chinese. That's it guys that's how to make these simple and easy to make mints meat filling. Now you may go forth and make yourself some delicious mints pies. You can make them small or large put star topped pastry on them whichever way you go with it but I do guarantee you that you will be making more than one jar and eating it all up. Thanks ever so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. Please do like and subscribe. Bye!