Baltic · Side
Mulgipuder
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, wood-smoke running underneath.
Ingredients
- 200 g pearl barley
- 1 kg floury potatoes, peeled and halved
- 1.2 litres water
- 12 g salt
- 40 g butter
- 150 g smoked pork belly or streaky bacon, diced
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
The skills inside
Salted water & the float testKeeping the cooking liquidMashing & puréeing
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the barley in cold water overnight and drain; this is not optional, it is the difference between creamy and crunchy.
- Simmer the barley in the salted water, covered, for about 45 minutes, until the grains have burst open and the liquid has gone slippery. 45 min
- Sit the potatoes on top, adding water only if the pan looks dry, and cook covered until a knife passes through them with no resistance at all.
- Drain any free liquid into a jug, add the butter and mash coarsely with a wooden masher, loosening with the reserved liquid until it holds a soft ridge; stop while you can still see whole barley grains.
- Fry the pork until the fat runs and the edges crisp, add the onion and take it to deep gold, then pour it fat and all over the puree and grind on the pepper.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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