While her “favourite” dish can be made with beef tenderloin steaks, according to McGrady, the queen prefers to eat this dish with venison that is typically hunted on her own lands at Sandringham or Balmoral — two of her country estates.
The meat is typically seasoned with salt and pepper and served over a potato and parsnip mash, so far, so healthy.
However it's then topped with a cream-based sauce that includes mushrooms and onions and garnished with baby carrots. The vegetables are often grown on estate grounds as well.
“One of the things I soon learned working for the queen, was that all of the dishes were rich in cream and butter and fat,” McGrady recalled in a YouTube video published by Delish.
“Calories didn’t really matter. We could use as much cream and butter in the dishes as we wanted to and it just made them taste amazing. It really was traditional French cuisine.”
The chef then added that the Queen isn’t one to overindulge.
“The queen is such a disciplinarian,” McGrady said.
“It amazed me that we would send a great big chocolate cake up for her to have a meal or afternoon tea and she would just take the tiniest slice.”
When the queen was finished with her treat, the cake would head back to the kitchen.
“If she wanted more, she would wait until the next day when that cake came up again,” McGrady continued.
Perhaps we should all take a slice out of the Queen's healthy eating handbook.
