Minced Meat

Kimas is treated as its own thing at a Greek butcher rather than as an afterthought, minced to order from a named cut and very often as a mix, beef with pork or beef with lamb, chosen for fat as much as for flavour. It carries an enormous share of the repertoire: keftedes, biftekia, soutzoukakia, giouvarlakia, the fillings for gemista and koupepia, and the sauces under moussaka and pastitsio.

Two techniques separate a good Greek meatball from a dense one. Bread soaked in water or red wine and squeezed out, rather than dry breadcrumbs, keeps the mixture soft, and onion grated rather than chopped releases its juice straight into the meat. Resting the mixture in the fridge for an hour before shaping lets the salt and herbs work through, and it holds together better in the pan.

The problems come from the two ends of the fat scale. Very lean mince gives dry meatballs however carefully it is seasoned, while a wet, undercooked mince sauce is what makes a moussaka collapse into a puddle. Cook the sauce down until no liquid pools when a spoon is drawn through the pan, and keep a little cinnamon in it, which is what makes the mince taste Greek.