Croquettas made with local Guanciale & Young Buck Raw Blue Cheese

  

Croquettas – irresistible, tasty little meat & cheese-filled morsels! Crunch through the outer crispy golden shell to find an oozing, soft centre full of flavour… This recipe comes with a disclaimer – you will not be able to stop at just one croquetta. Or two, or three!!

These Spanish-inspired bites bring together Young Buck – a creamy raw blue cheese made by Mike Thompson of Mike’s Fancy Cheese with Moyallon Guanciale, locally-cured pig cheek from The Meat Merchant. If you’ve not had Mike’s Young Buck and Peter Hannan’s Guanciale together on the end of your fork yet, you’re in for a real treat! Young Buck is a creamy stilton-like raw blue which melts around the crispy sweet and salty Guanciale in these croquettas. They’re delicious dunked into homemade lemon & thyme mayonnaise made with Broighter Gold’s lemon-infused rapeseed oil for a tasty beer snack or served up as a starter or on a party platter. Here’s our mayonnaise recipe if you’d like to give it a try too!

After you’ve tried these, be as creative as you like with the fillings in Croquettas – I’ve also made some with spiced beef & blue cheese, coppa and mushroom, black pudding & Guanciale … and the same goes for the mayonnaise, there are so many infused local oils to choose from!

Mike’s cheese in Arcadia Deli & a croquetta made with Guanciale & SculleryMade black pudding.

Croquettas made with local Guanciale & Youngbuck Raw Blue Cheese

Preparation time: 2-3 hours

Cooking time: 10 mins

Makes 8-10 croquettas

135 calories per croquette

Ingredients

150g plain white flour

60g butter

375mL milk

180g Moyallon Guanciale

100g Young Buck’s Blue Cheese

60g fresh breadcrumbs

Fresh Thyme

Pepper

For the crispy coating:

75g toasted breadcrumbs

75g plain flour

1 egg, beaten

Method

Fry the Guanciale and cut into small pieces, retain any leftover oil from the pan.

Melt the butter in a pan and season with pepper. Add any juices from the Guanciale pan to the melted butter.

Slowly add a quarter of the flour and mix into the butter over a low heat. Gradually add the milk and remaining flour constantly mixing until you have a thick paste.

To the paste, add the fresh breadcrumbs, chopped Thyme, Guanciale and cheese and mix evenly through the paste.

To make the breadcrumbs, lightly toast the bread slices. Using a food processor and standard blade, blitz the toasted bread for 2-3 minutes until it’s reduced to breadcrumbs.

To prep the croquettas, heat a deep-fryer filled with broighter gold plain rapeseed oil on high. Set up three bowls – One with plain flour, one with the beaten egg and a third with breadcrumbs. Shape the paste into golf ball sized pieces and cover in flour, roll in the egg wash, roll in the breadcrumbs and fry until golden brown in the deep-fryer.

Fry in small batches of 2-3 to avoid the temperature of the oil dropping too low.

Enjoy!!

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SculleryMade is a Belfast blog sharing recipes using quality, locally sourced ingredients. Our main recipes include methods for cooking, baking, brewing and curing.

SculleryMade – Ormeau Rd, Belfast                                                      Contact: Caoimhe@scullery-made.com