Welsh rarebit recipe

A few weeks ago I posted a recipe for bara brith and in the post I mentioned that, despite living in Wales for 15 years, I’d never had it before.  Well it’s the same for for Welsh rarebit.

Actually, that’s not 100% true.  I have had this before, just not in Wales.  The one and only time I’ve had it was in northern France.  Obviously!  It’s a bit of a thing over there apparently, and I did like the novelty of being in France and ordering a ‘welsh’!

In case you’ve not come across it before, welsh rarebit is basically just a variation of cheese on toast.  My husband and I made it for dinner last night and it was really easy to make and really tasty. So, on to the recipe!

What you need:

• 225g strong cheese such as Cheddar or Cheshire, grated
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon of English mustard (or two if you want a bit more of a kick)
• 2 teaspoons flour
• Pepper (a good few grinds of the pepper mill)
• 4 tablespoons of beer, stout or milk
• 4 slices of toast (thick bread is best for this)

What you do:

1. Put the cheese, butter, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, flour and pepper into a saucepan.
2. Mix it all together well and then add the beer (or stout/milk, whatever you’re using).
3. Stir it over a gentle heat until it’s all melted together into a pretty thick paste.
4. Take off the heat and leave it to cool a little bit.
5. Toast the bread while the cheese mixture is cooling slightly.
6. Spread the cheese mixture on the toast and brown under a hot grill.
7. Serve and enjoy!

Things to note:

• You’ll most likely want to make this once, and then tweak the recipe to suit your tastes.  We thought we’d most likely add a bit more mustard next time.
• There are a few options to change this recipe up a bit, my husband put sweet chilli sauce on top of his and it was really tasty!  We also thought this would work as a topping for tuna melts.

If you like this recipe, you might also like this one for slow cooker sweet potatoes, where we ended up making a sweet potato tuna melt!