We got this recipe from IvonneAjayi.co.uk. Meat pies are one of our favourite pastries, we had never made them before so we decided to give this a go and they turned out perfect!
Ingredients
This recipe makes 15-20 meat pies.
Note that: In order to achieve a flaky pastry it is important that you use cold ingredients, so your butter and eggs should be really cold. You also need to make sure that you do not ‘overwork’ the pastry by over mixing or over kneading. So once all ingredients are combined together and you get a rough ‘round’ shape, that’s it, just leave your pastry dough to rest in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes.
For the Pastry:
700-750g Flour
350g of Butter
2 tablespoons of Caster Sugar
1 teaspoon of Salt
1 teaspoon of Baking Powder
3 Eggs
And 1 egg for glazing the meat pies prior to baking
For the Meat Filling:
500g Lean Beef Mince
1 Large Potato or 4 (small/medium ones)
1 Onion
2 Scotch Bonnet Peppers (ata rodo) (not really for heat, more for flavour)
Knorr Chicken Stock Cubes
All-Purpose Seasoning
½ tablespoon of Black Pepper
1 tablespoon of Thyme
Oil
Steps
Add in dry ingredients and mix together
Now add in 350g of butter, be sure to divide the butter into smaller lumps, so you will not have to overwork the dough trying to incorporate the butter into flour.
Incorporate the butter into the flour with your fingers (or a food processor), working quickly as you don’t want the butter to begin to melt due to the temperature of your hands. What you are looking for is for the mixture to still have small clumps of butter, this creates the desired nice, flaky texture. It should look like small-medium sized breadcrumbs.
After this, create a hole/well in the middle of your pastry mixture, add in 3 beaten eggs, and incorporate well, keeping in mind not to over mix.
Your dough should begin to take shape a bit now, but to help this along if needed, add in a splash of water, probably about ¼ cup of cold water.
After you’ve worked the water in, take a handful of plain flour and sprinkle over the dough. Work this into your dough and once the added flour has disappeared. You pastry dough is ready. Stop kneading.
Place the dough into a mixing bowl and cover with cling-film and leave to rest in the fridge (at least 30 minutes), while we work on the meat filling.
Meat filling
Add in Onions and Scotch bonnet
Add in mince
Add stock cubes, all-purpose seasoning, black pepper and thyme into the mince.
Now add in the chopped potatoes and ensure all the cubes are properly coated.
Add in enough hot water to slightly cover the mince and potatoes
Once this time is up, evenly distribute 2 tablespoons of plain flour and mix well and quickly, so you don’t get any lumps. Adding flour thickens the sauce and makes the meat and potato filing lovely and moist. (However if you like your meat filling dry, you can skip adding water and just boil the potatoes separately then add to the fried minced beef).
Making the pies
Cut the pastry dough into equal portions. i.e with a knife cut the dough in half, then in quarters, then eighths and so on until you have the total number of pies you wish to make.
Preheat the oven to 175°C/ 345°F/ Gas mark 4
Lightly dust your work surface with plain flour (not too much so this does not incorporate into the pastry dough).
Take one of your dough balls and roll out evenly using a rolling pin, roll it out to your desired thickness (not too thick, you don’t want bread, and not too thin as you don’t want samosas either).
Cut out a circle shape with a round side plate, bowl, or cookie cutter etc.
Place a spoonful of the minced meat filling onto the centre of the pastry.
Carefully fold over one edge of the pastry over to the other a press along firmly (you won’t need to seal the edges with egg with this recipe).
Crimp the pastry edge with a fork to seal the meat pies.
Place pie on a baking tray/baking sheet (you will need use baking parchment paper or lightly grease your baking tray if your tray is non-stick).
Repeat until you have used up all of your pastry and meat filling.
Using a fork, prick holes into the pies to let excess steam within the pies escape during baking. (This is so you don’t end up with soggy meat pies).
Beat 1 egg, and using a pastry brush, brush the surface of the pies with beaten egg.
Place in the middle shelf of the oven for 35-40 minutes checking quickly halfway through baking.
Take the meat pies out of the oven and leave to rest for 5-10 minutes.
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