I love a nice dumpling - don't you?

We don't often have them but when we do, we always say - we must have these more often.

When we do make dumplings we use Atora Shredded Beef Suet. Beef Suet is made from the particular fat you find around the kidneys and groin area of cattle. There are a colossal 1660 calories in a standard 200g packet, but if you just have a couple of dumplings, it's not too bad, even though you are basically eating a lot of fat.

To make dumplings you just mix the suet with some self-raising flour and water and form it into dumpling shaped blobs. Pop them in the oven towards the end of the cooking time on a nice casserole and let them go slightly browned on the top. The full recipe is on the side of the pack. They are stodgy but lovely.

Of course there are lots of other uses for suet. I particularly like puddings made with suet and now that I have the packet in front of me for review, I think I'm going to have a Spotted Dick tomorrow. There are lots of other mouth watering suet recipes on the Atora website. Savoury Eccles Cakes looks a good one.

Suet is presented in a shredded form like lots of little cylindrical shapes each less than a centimetre long. They come in this way because in exposing lots of surface area, they are easier to mix with other ingredients. You can buy beef suet in a big block from the butcher but it will be harder to work with. Somehow, when presented in this shredded format it doesn't really feel as if you are working with fat, even though it is greasy to the touch.

I find that in working with suet and when making dumplings in particular your hands do get very sticky and covered in mix. Using a bit of flour will help to minimise this.

Atora dates from 1893 and is a brand leader. You can also buy a vegetarian suet called Atora Light and this contains 25% less fat than the standard beef suet, but I haven't tried this. Overall, suet seems to be rather an unhealthy product and probably shouldn't feature extensively in your diet, but as an occasional indulgence, then why not?