Easy Mincemeat Recipe: 4 Ways to Use Mincemeat

Mincemeat consists of chopped dried fruits and spices rehydrated with a distilled spirit or liquor. Traditional British recipes for mincemeat—a Christmas-time classic—may include venison or beef suet, a hard, crumbly kind of fat located around the kidneys. As the name suggests, recipes for mincemeat in the fifteenth century included actual meat, fermented together with fruit into a savory-sweet pie filling. By the nineteenth century, suet had replaced the meat itself, while modern recipes are often made without it entirely.

Mincemeat is most commonly known as a pie filling, but its intense aromatics and sweet, boozy stickiness make it a great addition to several dishes.

1. 1. Add it to vanilla ice cream. One way to enjoy mincemeat is with a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream. Skip the store-bought varieties and make your own homemade vanilla ice cream. According to the manufacturer’s instructions, churn a mixture of vanilla extract, heavy cream, full-fat milk, and granulated sugar in an ice cream maker until it reaches the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Then, add a ¼–½ cup of mincemeat to the base and churn an additional minute or two to distribute evenly.
2. 2. Use it as a filling or garnish for classic holiday pies. The concentrated, spiced flavors of mincemeat are a perfect match for two classic holiday pies: apple pie and pumpkin pie. (Before folding in a few tablespoons of mincemeat to the filling of your apple pie, consider the apple you’ll use: For example, the tartness of Granny Smiths provides the ideal balance to the moody flavors of mincemeat.) Alternatively, spoon some mincemeat over the top of a pumpkin pie for a seasonal pop of color and texture.
3. 3. Make mincemeat cake. Like a fruit cake, a mincemeat cake is a popular seasonal bake that features a light, fluffy cake batter evenly studded with sweet, meltaway bites of dried fruit. You can bake the cakes as loaves or as a festive Bundt cake.
4. 4. Make mincemeat pies. You can make mince pies as open-faced tarts in a buttery pie crust or use mincemeat as a filling for individual hand pies.

You can scale recipes up or down for homemade mincemeat to include more individual ingredients or spice profiles:

1. 1. Choosing your alcohol. While the traditional choice for mincemeat is brandy, you may also make it with dark rum or a citrus liqueur for a different effect.
2. 2. Make it alcohol-free. Instead of brandy, use an equal amount of apple cider, orange juice, or apple juice with a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
3. 3. Make it vegetarian. Traditional mincemeat calls for suet, which aids in long-term storage and acts as a binding agent when you bake the mixture in a pie, but you can make your own mincemeat free of animal products by omitting it entirely.