At the centre of so many midweek meals around the world is that cheapest of proteins: mince. It’s also regularly among our top-five most-searched ingredients online.

Two hundred years ago, making mince was a time-consuming task requiring endless chopping. Mince only really came into its own, both commercially and in the home kitchen, when the German inventor Karl Drais created the fleischwolf in the 1840s. This was the world’s first hand-cranked mechanical meat mincer, and it opened up a world of meal possibilities, with everything from burgers and meatloaf to dan dan noodles following.

When it comes to Australia’s favourite mince recipe, this is undoubtedly spaghetti bolognese. A dish unknown in Italy, the first recipe for a ‘spaghetti bolognaise’ casserole was actually published here in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1952.

So the big question now is, what should our next favourite mince-based dish be? Maybe it’s a spaghetti bolognese made – controversially, but also rather tastily – with chicken mince? Or a two-ingredient burger that’s so TikTok-ready it thinks up its own dance moves? Or maybe not. 

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Here are my top next-big-mince-things.

LARB

A fiery salad of herb and pork mince zinging with lemongrass and lime juice, pungent with fish sauce and snapping at your lips with chilli heat.

BALLS, BABS AND BEH

Too many worthy contenders here – from Finnish meatballs and Middle Eastern kebabs to Lebanese kibbeh – but for my money, we need to pay more attention to those Indian skewers of pressed minced meat mashed and bound with ground onion, chilli, coriander seeds, turmeric and cumin, with perhaps a little corn or gram flour to help. Grill, turn, then eat with mint chutney, fresh curds and a little tamarind sauce.

LAMB MINCE REBORN

Lamb mince gets a bad rap, usually when it turns up in a pedestrian shepherd’s pie, but when deployed in Jessica Brooks’ Middle Eastern lamb tart, it becomes something vibrant, with lemon, feta and a bright parsley salad nestled within a crispy golden filo crust. Simpler yet is pressing spiced lamb mince into a thin disc of flatbread dough to be baked as a Turkish lahmacun.

MIDWEEK MINCE 

From ‘ants climbing a tree’ (ma yi shang shu – glass noodles with pork mince) to san choy bow, there are some excellent and easy Asian meals which bombard quick-cooking mince with big – often bottled – flavours. But best of all has to be Thailand’s favourite midweek meal, pad kra pao. This is a wonder of dark, sticky, sweet browned mince with aromatic holy basil and a backbone of customisable chilli heat.

Make Matt’s pad kra pao (pictured above) here.

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