Jacket Potatoes are BIG here. There are little fast-food outlets that sell them even.

You know the ones, baked potatoes topped with your choice of meat, cheese, seafood, what have you.

I remember a for brief moment in the eighties, jacket potatoes had their limelight in Sydney, but that faded quickly. There was this one place called Pickwicks Potatoes.

And so since then my we have been calling this meal Pickwicks. Jacket potato sprinkled with cheese and then topped with savoury mince and a dollop of sour cream. Lovely.

It’s a meal I grew up with and now so are my kids. They love it. Except we don’t use cheese any more since KT freaked out over a morsel of melted cheddar on his potato. Kids.

Anyway, I have always played around with my savoury mince, never knowing what exactly makes it good. I have used herbs, sauces and spices to intensify the flavour but recently discovered that all I needed were three simple sauces to make it super delicious.

I came across this discovery in my recent move. I was preparing the meal only to realise I had hardly any ingredients in my cupboard.

But I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty these few simple ingredients made the mince.

Nana’s all over the Western World have probably been making their savoury mince like this for generations, but I have never thought to use these ingredients together before.

Drumroll….

Ok, so the magic ingredients are tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and light soy sauce.

Just saute some diced onion and garlic in the pan. Brown the mince. Add the sauce to your liking.

I use a little blended water and flour to thicken the sauce.

Et voila!

You can use this mince for Pickwicks, Shepard’s Pie or just serve up on some buttered toast.