Hakkebøf med Bløde Løg

Every country has a Tuesday dinner. A dish nobody writes poems about, nobody photographs for magazines, nobody puts on a restaurant menu. In Denmark, that dish is hakkebøf med bløde løg. Beef patties with soft onions. It sounds like nothing. It tastes like home.

The patties themselves are modest: good ground beef, an egg, a little flour and cold water to keep them tender. You shape them into ovals, not rounds, because the wider shape gives you more crust, and the crust is everything. They go into a hot pan with butter and oil and they don't move until the underside is dark and firm. Then you flip once. That's it.

But the dish lives or dies with the onions. Four large onions, sliced thin and cooked slowly in butter for half an hour until they collapse into something golden and sweet and barely recognisable as the sharp, eye-watering things you started with. Bløde løg. Soft onions. The name tells you what to aim for. If you rush them, you get fried onions, and fried onions are not this dish. Give them time. That patience is the entire recipe.

The gravy comes together in the same pan you fried the patties in, built on the dark fond that clings to the bottom. A spoon of flour, good stock, a dash of soy for colour and depth. Three minutes and you have a sauce that pulls everything together. Serve it with plain boiled potatoes and pickled beetroot if you like, and don't worry about presentation. This food wants to be eaten, not admired.