Being Australian, I have probably eaten a million meat pies in my life time, and I have the waistline to prove it! A million might be a slight exaggeration, but there’s rarely a week that passes when I don’t have a meat pie. Just down the road from where I live is a drive through pie shop where I can easily grab a pie and a large cappuccino to go. Living alone means if I don’t cook, nobody else is around to cook, so a pie and coffee fills the hole.
A bought meat pie is never as good as a homemade pie though. When you cook your first pie using good ingredients you’ll see how bad most bought meat pies really are. I’m still working on the perfect meat pie recipe and I’m hoping to achieve that goal in the next few years, but for now, this cheese and bacon pie is pretty bloody good 😉
The possibilities are unlimited when it comes to making meat pies and I always try to mix it up when I make them. I usually make 4 small meat pies at a time and each one of them is always slightly different to the other.
A plain meat pie will be very similar to the cheese and bacon pie, just leave out the cheese and bacon.. easy peasy.
Meat pie cut in half with melted cheese. Experiment with the type of cheese you use. At different times I have used aged cheddar cheese, Kraft cheese slices, mozzarella and whatever else happens to be in the fridge when I’m baking meat pies.
Experiment with different size pie tins too. This small round one is really quite deep and a lot of meat fits into it. I mostly use these smaller tins as they’re easier for me to keep for the next few days but you could also make them into larger family size pies.
- Pie Pastry Base
- 3 and 3/4 cups of plain flour
- 2/3 cup of margarine
- 1 cup of milk
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 2 sheets of frozen puff pastry for the pie lid[br]
- Meat Pie Filling
- 500 grams or 1.125 pounds of ground beef
- 1 small piece of good quality steak
- 1 cup of diced bacon
- 2 cups of grated cheese
- 2 cups of water
- 1 teaspoon of beef stock
- 1 teaspoon of curry powder
- 1/4 cup of cornflour
- 1 tablespoon of plain flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
- pinch of salt and pepper
- 3 teaspoons of tomato sauce (ketchup)
- 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce
- Add the margarine and 1 and 3/4 cups of plain flower to a bowl and mix them with your hands.
- Add the milk and mix them well.
- Add the salt and remaining flour to form a dough and make it into a ball. Then let it rest for 20 minutes.
- Roll the mix out to suit your preference. Some like a thick pie pastry base, others like it thin. If it’s your first attempt, try one pie with a thick base and the other with a thinner base. Then place the rolled out dough into your greased pie dish. [br]
- Dice the steak into small bite size pieces and add them to a large saucepan with a splash of olive oil. I allow it to start cooking at a low heat while I prepare the rest of the ingredients as I want it to be tender.
- Add the minced beef, most of the bacon (keep a little to add with the cheese later), water, beef stock, curry powder, nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste, and the sauces.
- After adding the ingredients I like to cook it for a further 30 minutes on a low heat. If the mixture needs thickening (it probably won’t) use the cornflour and plain flour to thicken the mixture. I like to cook it for a reasonable amount of time, just as I do with [url href=”http://www.goodfoodrecipes.com/spaghetti-bolognese-recipe/”]spaghetti bolognese sauce[/url].
- After the meat has cooled down a little add it to the pie bases. Don’t fill them to the top.
- Place the grated cheese and remaining bacon pieces on top of the pie filling. Try a variety of different cheeses as they all add such a different flavor to the pie. I have even used those plastic wrapped cheese slices which I consider to be barely cheese and they work really well. An aged cheddar cheese is my favorite though.
- Add the puff pastry pie lids to the top to close the pies and prick them with a fork.
- They should bake for about 20 minutes @ 220Celsius or 428Fahrenheit.
Prijatnovo appetita!
I made this using bought puff pastry and bought pastry for the base. Easy and very tasty. Good luck with the Good Food Recipes blog Dion.
Thank you Sarah. I still have a lot to learn with running a recipe blog but I’m slowly getting there 😉
And yeah I have bought the base pastry before too and it works well. I usually make my own though as it’s pretty quick and easy.
Hi there, I’m in the states and have never cooked an Australian meat pie and would like to give it a try 🙂 . Your recipe looks delicious! Just one question – when you say to add the minced beef in step #2 of the filling, do you mean to add it raw with the other ingredients and let it cook that way?
Looks delicious! Just one question, are we adding the bacon to the cheese raw ir do we cook it first?