Carrie Shannon’s latest venture, Stovie Stramash, is offering a brand new take on stovies, including, Bombay, spicy and veggie.
Stovie Stramash is a new food offering coming to a food van near you.
Dundee entrepreneur Carrie Shannon, who runs the popular We Love Platters, has been busy developing the venture as the main attraction for her new food truck which she hopes to have out on the road in the near future.
Stovies are a hugely popular dish, and synonymous with Scotland.
However, Carrie noted that there are always differing views about how you make the traditional treat that combines potatoes with onions and either corned beef or leftover beef.
Having given this due consideration, the 41-year-old wondered how people would react to stovies cooked in the style of different cuisines, and Stovie Stramash was born.
Different flavours from Stovie Stramash
Carrie explained that having previously worked in the events business, she had set up her platter business just before the coronavirus lockdown kicked in March 2020.
She had been looking to move into something else and had always wanted to get into the food business.
Stovie Stramash offers five different flavours of stovies – some of which you will certainly have never tried before.
“It doesn’t matter where you are from in the country be it Glasgow, Dundee or Aberdeen, we all have our own little version of how to make stovies, so I wondered if you went around the world, would everyone have a version of stovies?” Carrie explained.
“So that was when I thought I would come up with stovies from all around the world. Stramash means to make a noise about something, so we are making a noise about stovies. That was how I came up with that name.
“We are just trying to make stovies a little bit new, a little bit cool – not like when you went to your granny’s when you were younger.”
Sweet potato and chilli stovies
One of Carrie’s flavours will not surprise you – but the others are definitely a leap into the unknown for traditional stovie connoisseurs.
“We have classic, which is my classic and the way I make it with corned beef and onion with potato, then we have spicy which is sweet potato, chorizo, red onion and chillies,” she revealed.
“Then we have Bombay which is keema mince with potatoes and your Indian spices. We also have meaty which is steak, skin-on potatoes and black pudding, and then the veggie option which is carrots, parsnips, potatoes and Simon Howie vegetarian sausage.”
Having developed the flavours, Carrie formed a tasting panel to see what the reaction would be to her creations.
“I got family and people that I know in the food world and asked them if they would like to taste them and give me their feedback,” she added.
“And there isn’t just one favourite, everybody has a different favourite, which is really good. Some people said the spicy ones were too spicy, others said they were fine. The hardest ones to nail down were the Bombay ones, as we had to combine all the Indian spices to get it right.”
Serving stovies from a food van
With the products now in place, Carrie is looking at ways of taking them to the public with stovies on sale from her food van when it is up and running.
Last week she took pre-orders for Friday with free delivery offered to those living within Dundee, and collection available, too.
Carrie was delighted to receive so many orders from those keen to try out the new flavours, so Friday was a busy day for her.
“I have a food van, but I am looking for someone to make it all nice, and that is a work in progress. However, through time, I am aiming to serve stovies from the van,” she said.
“We will be going to pop-up events and maybe a car park where people go walking and they can get a tub of stovies when they come off the hill.
“Right now we are doing a soft launch in Dundee and I am also examining the possibility of sending them out by post so that is where I am just now. In the food van, we will also be loaded fries and potentially something else.”
Wedding bookings success
Stovie Stramash follows Carrie’s first food venture, a platter company, which she was encouraged to set up having impressed friends and family at a birthday celebration.
“I also have a platter company, We Love Platters. We do cheese and meat platters, fruit platters and things like that,” she added.
“We are getting approached now to do weddings and events and we actually have a lot of weddings booked for August, September and October.
“I started that last March just before the pandemic. I toyed with the idea the Christmas before as I had turned 40 in December and did a platter for all my friends and family and people said I should do it as a business and I thought ‘I will wait and see’.
“I had done it for friends and family and we went into lockdown and I started doing the platters and it just went from strength to strength.”