Steak and kidney pudding (PC)

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Cooked & serving

Ready for the lid

Cooking steak and kidney pudding in a pressure cooker reduces the cooking time by more than half compared to the conventional method.

The pudding is known colloquially as "Babby's Yead" (Baby's Head) in certain areas of North West England.

Ingredients

Suet crust

• 350 g( 12 oz) self-raising flour
• 175 g (6 oz) shredded beef suet (Atora)
• Pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Filling

• 560 g (1¼ lb) chuck steak / braising steak
• 275 g (10 oz) ox kidney - trimmed to 225 g (8 oz)
• some supermarkets sell the above, ready trimmed, in one packet
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• Big pinch of mustard powder
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Handful of fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 tablespoon of mushroom ketchup
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Oxo cube, crumbled
• medium onion, peeled and sliced
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Pastry

1. You can do this in a food processor, but don't over-mix it
2. Sift the flour, salt and mustard into a large mixing bowl
3. Season with black pepper
4. Add the suet, a few drops of water and combine with the flour, using a palette knife
5. Continue stirring, adding a few drops of water at a time until it starts to become a little clay-like
6. Stop adding water now and mix with your hands
7. Keep mixing until you have a smooth elastic dough. You can always make small adjustments by adding a little more flour or water as needed
8. Divide the dough into ¼ for the lid and ¾ t line the bowl
9. Roll out a circle, quite thick, about a foot in diameter and press into your pie-bowl
10. Roll the remainder out as a lid so that it sits over the edges of the lined bowl

Filling

1. Trim the meat and kidneys of excess fat etc. so you have the correct weight. Feed your cats or dogs with the remainder!
2. Season the flour with salt, pepper and mustard
3. Dredge the meat and kidney in the seasoned flour
4. Add all of the filling ingredients to a separate bowl. Crumble in the Oxo cube. Mix well with your hands.
5. Fill the suet-lined bowl with the filling ingredients.
6. Shake any remaining flour over the top and just cover the meat with cold water

Wrapping and cooking

1. Cover with a double layer of tin-foil, leaving a pleat for expansion
2. Tie with kitchen string.
3. Quarter fill the pressure cooker with boiling water.
4. Place the bowl in the shallow trivet.
5. Cook on high pressure for 2 hours.
6. Allow the pressure to come down naturally.

Serving suggestions

Serve with mashed potatoes and peas.

Don't try and invert a pudding of this size onto a plate. You are inviting disaster, and for no sensible reason. Trust me. Serve it directly out of the bowl!

Chef's notes

• Don't sit the bowl on a saucer in the pan. It will probably be broken after 5 hours
• Next time, using this quantity, I would make 2 separate puddings
• Check the use-by date of the suet, I had a batch of suet-pudding failures, which I eventually traced to years out-of-date packet suet. It does go off.

Variations

Other variations can be found on the comments page.

This recipe was tested in a WMF 6.5 litre pressure cooker. On this model high pressure is represented by two red rings showing (117°C)

See also

• Pressure cooker recipes
• Steak and kidney pudding - recipe and timings for the non-pressure cooker version.