Minced beef, leek and potato bake

Leeks and potatoes famously go together in vichyssoise, or in hot leek and potato soup for that matter, in a potato and leek gratin. Ground beef and potatoes pair up in a cottage pie, while beef and leeks are an excellent match.

This recipe brings all three together. At the bottom of the dish there’s a base of leeks and minced beef that have been cooked together. Scalloped potatoes are layered end to end in rows on top, and it’s topped with grated cheddar cheese and gratinated in the oven.

Scalloped, if you’re wondering, refers to thin slices that are cut right through the potato to make rounds of about half a centimetre in thickness. They could be thicker but I think they’re more elegant the slimmer they are. They can be less than 0.5cm in thickness, though the thinner they are, the more risk there is of them breaking up.

The leeks — in thin slices — are cooked first, on their own, until tender. I flavoured them only with a little grated nutmeg, salt and white pepper. 

The mince is then added to this, with dried oregano, and cooked slowly with strong beef stock until the mince is tender.

But the first thing you need to cook is the potatoes, which need to be parboiled and given enough time to cool down before you slice them carefully into the desired scallops.

Tony’s minced beef, leek and potato bake

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

5 or 6 large potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly

3 Tbsp butter

3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

3 cups of sliced leeks

A few gratings of nutmeg

Salt and white pepper to taste

600g lean beef mince

1 heaped tsp dried oregano

250ml strong beef stock (I used 2 Ina Paarman sachets dissolved in 250ml water)

Additional salt and white pepper for the mince

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Method

Peel the potatoes — don’t cut them up — and put them in a pot of salted cold water, whole. Bring to a boil and simmer briskly until parboiled, i.e. until they are about half cooked. This  should take about 10 minutes of rapid boiling. Drain them and leave them to cool until you can handle them.

Once they’re cool enough, slice them into scallops of equal thickness.

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Melt butter in a medium-sized pot and add the sliced leeks. Season with grated nutmeg, salt and white pepper. Simmer, stirring, until the leeks are tender, about 10 minutes on a low heat.

Turn the heat up a little. Add the ground beef all at once and use a flat-ended spatula to break the mince down and prevent it from forming clumps.

Add the beef stock and the oregano, stir, and bring the contents of the pot to a steady simmer. Let it cook, stirring now and then so it doesn’t catch at the bottom, until the beef is tender and a good deal of the stock has evaporated. This should take about 15 minutes.

Taste and decide whether more salt and/or pepper are required.

If there’s still a lot of liquid in the pot, continue cooking until the meat is well coated with liquid, has a good sheen on it, but the liquid has largely disappeared.

Grease an oven dish with butter and add the mince mixture.

Place the potato scallops in rows to cover it, overlapping. 

Season the potatoes with salt.

Scatter the grated cheese over.

Bake in the preheated 200°C oven until the cheese has melted and turned golden, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Let it stand out of the oven for 10 minutes to firm up a little, before serving. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.