Mint Sauce

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Everyone in the southern hemisphere who has a vegie patch is sure to have mint galore.  Once a fortnight, I rip it out, leaving only a small patch to run riot for the next fortnight. It is amazingly prolific.  We use a lot of mint but nowhere near as much as we grow.

I am going through a barbecued lamb phase at the moment.  This consists of buying a butterflied leg of lamb, marinating it in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, rosemary and oregano and then cooking it over a high temperature on the barbecue.  When it is cooked, I pour a decent amount of mint sauce over the lamb then let it rest for 10 minutes or so.  Alas, we arrived in Bridgetown on Christmas Eve without mint sauce.  What was I to do?  After one look at the prolific mint, I decided to make some.  It is so very easy and it is great to find a use for some of that mint.

This recipe is from taste.com.au, although I have changed the amount of water and sugar somewhat.  I found the original quantities made the sauce a little too tangy.  You may also want to play around with the quantities.

Ingredients:

  • ¾ cup chopped mint
  • 2 tbs* caster sugar
  • ½ cup boiling water
  • ½ cup white vinegar

*These are 20 mil tablespoons.

Instructions:

  1. Put the mint into a heat-resistant bowl.
  2. Add the sugar and boiling water and stir until the sugar dissolves.
  3. Add the vinegar and mix well.

I also added 2 teaspoons of Instant Clearjel to thicken the sauce slightly.  I appreciate most Australians don’t have Clearjel in their cupboard so you won’t be able to do this but US readers may wish to thicken their sauce.  I slowly sprinkled the Instant Clearjel into the vinegar whilst Maus whisked it.  As I am sure all who have used Instant Clearjel know, it is very quick to clump.  If it does, just give it a whirl with a stick blender before adding the vinegar to the mint.

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11 thoughts on “Mint Sauce

  1. Your sauce looks delicious and has maintained a vibrant colour. What is clearjel Brenda? I made mint jelly recently, it was nice, but I wasn’t too happy with the final product, so I have yet to work on the recipe.

    • Hi Liz. Here is a pretty good explanation http://www.pickyourown.org/ClearJel.htm
      I bought mine from Berryfarm 1lb of instant and 1lb of the normal. The postage was pretty bad but it takes a while to use. It is so much better than cornflour. Instant clumps so they say mix it with sugar first (if sugar is in the recipe) or mix it with a stick blender. It is fantastic, you don’t have to heat your desserts etc. Plain Clearjel is used in preserves, especially pie fillings.

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