KO EN Macanese Main course⏱ 65 minEdit history

Minchi (Minced Beef with Fried Potato and an Egg)

Name: Minchi (Minced Beef with Fried Potato and an Egg)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h 5 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Macanese
Ingredients: 300 g minced beef; 200 g minced pork; 1 onion; 3 cloves garlic; 2 bay leaves; 2 tbsp soy sauce; 1 tsp dark soy sauce; 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce; 1 tsp sugar; 1 tsp black pepper; 2 tbsp olive oil; 100 ml water; 400 g potatoes; 400 ml oil for frying; 4 bowls cooked rice; 4 eggs; 1 handful coriander or spring onion

Macau's national dish, and the name comes straight from the English word mince. Ground meat is reduced with soy and Worcestershire sauce, small-diced potato is fried separately, and the two are combined at the last second over rice with a fried egg on top. That last second is the whole dish. Cooked with the meat the potato drinks the sauce and goes soft into one mass; added at the end it stays crisp among wet mince, so one bowl carries two textures. This plate is what four hundred years of a Portuguese and Cantonese kitchen produced.

Steps

Cut the potatoes into 1cm dice, rinse and dry them thoroughly. Wet potato spits instead of frying (deep frying).
⏲ 10 min
Heat the oil to 180C and fry the potato 6-7 minutes, until deep gold outside and cooked through. Lift it out onto paper and leave it there — it does not go in with the meat.
⏲ 7 min
Cook the onion in the olive oil for 6 minutes until translucent, then add the garlic and bay for a minute more.
⏲ 7 min
Add the minced meat and fry it, breaking the lumps up constantly, until browned. Macanese minchi is fine and even rather than a pan of coarse clumps.
⏲ 10 min
Add the soy, dark soy, Worcestershire, sugar and pepper, pour in the water and reduce uncovered 12 minutes. There should be almost no liquid left in the pan and the meat should look glossy. Liquid left here is liquid the potato will drink.
⏲ 12 min
Off the heat and only then, fold the fried potato through with two or three turns. Do not keep stirring. The potato is not here to soak in the sauce, it is here to stay dry among wet meat.
⏲ 1 min
Fry the eggs separately — crisp white edges, a yolk that still runs (eggs).
⏲ 3 min
Spoon the meat and potato over rice, set an egg on top and scatter the coriander or spring onion. Serve at once: the potato is crisp for a few minutes only (serving temperature).
⏲ 3 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Why Worcestershire and soy sauce are in the same pan: Macanese food came out of four hundred years of Portuguese cooks and cooks from Malacca, Goa and Guangdong sharing a kitchen, and it is often called the world's oldest fusion cuisine. Minchi is its emblem — a Portuguese mince carrying soy and dark soy alongside a sauce that arrived through British colonial trade.
Boiled instead of fried potato: some households do it. It is a different dish — the crisp contrast goes and you have a soft mince.
Chicken or tuna minchi: the Lent and Friday versions, common in Macau.
The same slot as katsudon and gyudon: something over rice with an egg on it. Like omurice, napolitan and Japanese curry it is a European method landing on Asian rice, and minchi is among the oldest of them.
Against shepherd's pie and bobotie: all three are minced meat with potato. Shepherd's pie mashes the potato into a lid, bobotie covers it with a custard, minchi fries the potato and folds it through.

Tips

Fry the potato separately and add it last. This is the one place the dish is lost. Cooked with the meat the potato absorbs the sauce and goes soft, and then you have mince with potato in it.
Reduce the meat properly dry. Liquid left in the pan will wet the potato within minutes, however late you add it.
Use a waxy potato. A floury one fries well and then breaks up when you fold it in.
Break the lumps up as you fry. Coarse clumps make it closer to a bolognese than to Macau's minchi.
The dark soy is for colour. With ordinary soy alone it tastes much the same and looks grey. If you have none, add a teaspoon more soy and move on.