Click here for the recipe to Matt”s world’s best rissoles.

Black is back as retro Aussie classics make a comeback driven by a huge surge of public interest. The return of retro is reflected in the booming searches on recipe sites like delicious.com.au and taste.com.au for dishes like chow mein, sweet and sour, devilled eggs, coronation chicken and prawn cocktail.

So far, the humble rissole has been lagging behind in this revolutionary retro love-in. Perhaps memories of those original grey, hand grenades of mince temper our enthusiasm for what should stand as one of the contenders for Australia’s national dish.

I say this, not just because the rissole has been there since the earliest days of the bush pioneers and, made with rationed bully beef and grated hardtack, it sustained our Anzacs at Gallipoli but because, like this great country, it is flexible enough to welcome all flavours from around the world whether they came here by plane or boat. This is the true heroism of the modern rissole.

The secret of a great rissole has been known for longer. It’s been 21 years since Darryl Kerrigan (played by Michael Caton) praised his wife’s rissoles in The Castle. Sal (Anne Tenney) bats away the compliment with, “Everybody cooks rissoles, darl,” but then Darryl offers true culinary insight into this most Aussie of dinners, with the immortal words, “Yeah, but it’s what you do with them.”

That right there is the secret to the resurrection of the rissole. It’s always been a welcome friend to customisation, whether as a willing home to leftovers or pliant pal of your wildest flavour flights of fancy. So here are five rules for making your Aussie rissoles rock harder than Angus Young’s minor pentatonic riff in “TNT”.

Select your meat

As a fried, or fried and baked, patty you can build a rissole with pretty much any mince you’d like. You don’t even need to use mince. Some more wisdom, this time from the young Dale Kerrigan (Stephen Curry): “Mum reckons the trick is you don’t use mince meat, she gets topside and crushes it.” Interestingly this is how it’s recorded that Franciscan monks in the Middle Ages made ‘rissoles’ for feasts: by pounding pork or chicken into a paste and then pressing it into balls.

Choose the flavouring

If you look back at rissole recipes from the last century, you’ll find the minced meat flavoured with everything from curry powder and dried herbs to dollops of sweet chilli, barbecue or even tomato sauce. I think we can do better than that and make rissoles into something you can still call your own. Adam Liaw uses vegemite in his barbecue beef rissoles to be served with a tangy avocado sauce, while Julie Goodwin uses both grated tasty cheese and Dijon mustard in her panfried-then-baked beauties.

Add bulk

If you just press pounded or minced meat together to make rissoles you’ll get those grey grenades. That’s why good rissole recipes almost always include something to lighten the mix and also to bulk out the rissoles; whether it’s breadcrumbs, oats or cornflake crumbs. Other ways to add bulk include everything from lentils (great in a spicy vindaloo rissole) to leftover veg like carrot, zucchini or peas.

There’s even a whole subsection of rissole culture devoted to starchier veg like mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes or pumpkin. These, assuming they aren’t too wet, provide a brilliant backdrop for all manner of spiced or herbed minces, fish or other vegetables. Toss lamb mince or roast cauliflower in cumin powder to mix with crushed steamed potato, diced green chilli and chopped coriander. Or make a ‘fissole’, by mixing in tinned tuna or flaked salmon fillet with lots of chopped dill and spring onions. It’s not a bad idea to bread (crumb) or batter these mash-based rissoles to help them stay together when frying as they will be quite fragile. Do remember to flavour that batter with herbs or spices like turmeric, smoked paprika or chilli powder.

It’s worth noting that this is perhaps more of an Indian ‘cutlet’ than an Aussie rissole because what makes an Aussie rissole unique from its English and Irish cousins is that it is not normally breaded or fried but just cooked ‘nude’.

Make a glaze

This nude cooking gives one massive advantage. Once the rissole is browned there is no crispy crust that you need to protect, which means it’s a prime candidate for glazing.

Vintage rissoles would normally be served with something sweet and sour like a chutney or have that sweet and sourness already in them (thanks to the addition of that sweet chilli, barbecue or tomato sauce). I would rather add this as a simple pan glaze to contrast with meaty salinity of the rissole. Making a rissole glaze also means you can capture all the brown, meaty goodness that might otherwise be left in the pan.

After cooking my World’s Best Lamb Rissoles, I’ll remove them and deglaze the pan over a gentle heat with a couple of tablespoons of malt vinegar and ¼ cup of mint jelly stirred in. When the jelly melts into the vinegar I return these herby rissoles to the pan and give them a toss to coat. It is amazing how this glaze will lift even ordinary lamb rissoles like mine to another level.

You can do the same thing with other rissoles. Turkey rissoles love a glaze of cranberry sauce and cider vinegar balanced with a little caster sugar or honey. Those hot vindaloo rissoles go great with a red wine and garlic gastrique.

For pork rissoles with flavourings like diced cooked carrot, fennel and five-spice powder try a char siu or hoisin-based glaze. Dust with sesame seeds or crushed peanuts respectively. Chicken rissoles are great coated in a glaze of sweet chilli sauce loosened with lemon juice, or just maple syrup with a little sriracha chilli sauce.

Think about sides

Rissoles deserve mash but don’t be limited to just potato mash. You can obviously stray as far from this norm as you like – rissoles are equally at home in a salad, served in dressed pasta, cous cous, rice noodles or even with fried rice. You can eat them for dinner, or pack them in a school lunch box in a wrap, roll or bun. If you’ve glazed them, shredded iceberg and a little mayo will make any of these bready combos a real treat.

You’ll find my World’s Best Rissoles recipe from my cookbook, Yummy, Easy, Quick, at delicious.com.au. They are quite good rissoles that respect the past but embrace the future. More importantly they only take 20 minutes to prep and the recipe can also be used as a template for creating your own revolutionary rissoles.

The world’s next best rissoles recipes:

Make rissoles with pork mince, Chinese five spice powder and finely chopped fennel. Use soy-dunked hands to shape the patties. Serve with broccolini tossed in oyster sauce and brown rice alongside.

Make rissoles with beef and smoked bacon mince, thawed corn kernels and barbecue sauce to bind. Serve with roasted sweet potatoes and sour cream and chives – or a fancier dressing of sour cream loosened slightly with a little vinegar and crumbled blue cheese stirred in.

Make rissoles with lamb mince, breadcrumbs, mint jelly, fresh mint and crushed pistachios. Serve in a salad of iceberg and cucumber dressed with tzatziki.

Make rissoles with pork and veal mince, ricotta, chopped semi-dried tomatoes, chopped basil and grated parmesan. Serve with spaghetti and a tomato passata.

Make rissoles with chicken mince and a paste of coriander stems and roots, lime zest, lemongrass, fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice. Serve on rice noodles topped with cucumber, Thai basil leaves, mint and sliced red chilli. Sprinkle with chopped roasted peanuts and drizzle with sweet chilli sauce or a dressing of fish sauce, sweet chilli and lime juice.