welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to
another lockdown so this is the week
between christmas and new year's and
where we live
we've gone back into a lockdown the
grocery stores are still open
but they're reduced in the number of
people that they can have inside which
means there's lineups
and so i thought i'd start cooking again
being more mindful of
not going to the grocery store quite so
often and what could i cook today
in the kitchen with stuff that i already
have on hand and i thought i'm gonna
make some meat pies
and normally for a meat pie i would
probably
use ground beef or something like a
chuck roast that has
a lot of fat and you could cook really
slowly and get nice and tender
but i don't have any of that what i do
have is um
is some beef in the dry ager and so this
is a strip loin
this is just a canada triple a strip
loin um that i picked up at costco
and i've already cut some off to make
sausage
so i'm going to take this and i'm going
to cut this up
and we're going to make meat pies and
like i said i get it you probably don't
have a dry ager
with beef in it and that's fine you
could use other meats
i will often have a couple of pounds of
ground
beef in the freezer that i would
normally use for this but i got caught
short so we'll see how this goes i'll
just trim away
most of the fat and the sinew from the
outside
i might leave this pellicle on the
outside
because that will add a lot of flavor
but i get rid of quite a bit of the fat
and so i'm going to cut this into a
fairly small
dice
i won't show it all to you but get the
idea here so
pieces that are
you know about like that so you can get
a few on
a fork or a spoon i'll finish cutting
this up
and then we'll move on okay so the beef
is all chopped up
and for those who are wondering that's
been in the dry ager for 30 days at this
point or maybe just a little over 30
days i'd have to check the tag again
anyway
around 30 days and like i said you don't
have to use
that type of beef you could use any beef
that you have you could use frozen
hamburger if you have it in your freezer
i'm pretty sure that if you changed up
the spicing you could use pork
you could you could probably use chicken
or even turkey
i think would be amazing if you just
change the spicing a little bit
really the idea of a meat pie is just to
take any meat that you have
with some vegetables often and encase it
in pastry
and really that could be anything you
want i'm
pretty positive as i was chopping up the
meat thinking
i could do this with two cans of beans
and
make it taste like beef make it
completely vegetarian
and make it taste like beef um which you
know what i might do i might do in a
couple of weeks i don't know about the
crust though
anyway let's give that a try so in a
couple weeks come back we'll do this
exact same recipe
except with two cans of white beans
because who doesn't have white beans in
their cupboard
okay the oil in the pan is hot and this
is uh bacon grease or bacon fat that i
save and we'll pop in the beef
and we'll get that browned off
[Music]
there's always some that gets away
okay the beef is browning up nicely i'm
gonna put in the veg and a lot of people
say vegetables don't
belong in a meat pie
in my case i think sometimes they do
onions definitely always so i'm going to
put those
in i've got some sliced mushrooms um
these were left over from pizza night
and so i had those in the fridge we're
just going to put those in
those will bring a real depth of flavor
i had one measly stalk of celery in the
fridge and it was pretty rubbery so
that goes in because it's on its last
legs
and i had half a carrot so half a carrot
goes in
this is the kind of thing that you can
prepare with you know just stuff that
you've got in your pantry
or laying in the bottom of the crisper
in your fridge
and play with it and you don't have to
be beholden to
what people tell you goes in a meat pie
sort of make it up as you go along okay
this is coming along really nicely we've
got a nice
fond on the bottom of the pan the
vegetables have softened up quite a bit
i'm going to move on to putting in our
spicing or the herbs
so i have thyme and marjoram i'll put
those in
of course use whatever you want um
summer savory would be fantastic in this
some hot pepper flakes if you want a
little bit of zing a little bit of extra
kick
that would be wonderful i mean you could
go full on chili
and turn this into a chili
meat pie that would be really good that
would be really good
that would be wonderful i'm not gonna
put any salt in
i'm using marmite and some stock that is
already pretty
salty so i'm not gonna over salt
but i am gonna put in some pepper at
this point
next in is a little bit of water maybe
three quarters of a cup i think
and because of the times we're in i
think
one of these little norse stockpots i'm
not going to put the whole thing in
marco pierre white might be appalled
that i'm not going to use the whole
thing
but these are very salty and they are
very strong so i'm going to use half of
a pot put the other half in the freezer
and use it sometime down the line
and these are great as a shortcut
something that you should have in your
pantry so that you can just pull it out
when you need it
especially in the times we're living in
right now where you know anything could
happen
at any time so that's going to go in
next thing i'm going to put in is
marmite marmite in everything with beef
i love marmite in anything with beef so
i'm going to put in a good
spoonful of that
get that in mix it in
and i'm going to turn the temperature
down to kind of a dull roar at this
point
low simmer
scrape up the fond that's on the bottom
and you know what i'm going to go in
with the rest of that
water go for a full cup now i used water
beer or wine are obvious choices for the
liquid
they'll change the flavor a little bit
and they'll bring quite a bit to the
flavor in fact
i went with water because that was easy
today and i'm going to put in
a little bit of vinegar just to
bring some acid tang to it to sort of
offset the other flavors
and that acid often brings together all
of the flavors and makes it cohesive
so stir that in and then i'm going to
put a lid on this and i'm going to let
it go on a low
simmer covered for probably 45 minutes
or more
okay we're probably about halfway
through cooking the filling and
i've already checked this once and i
added a little bit more water i thought
i needed
more water so that i could make a really
nice gravy at the end
get a nice thick gravy filling
now i'm gonna move on to the pastry so i
have made a lard pastry or a pure lard
pastry
if you're in canada i just use tender
flake and i just use the recipe that's
on the box
i'll try to link below to that recipe
i've got a video you could also use
butter pastry if you wanted to but
lard is probably best although beef
tallow if you can get beef tallow
that would be the ultimate and i
couldn't find my
individual pie plates so i've got these
little white dishes they're about the
right size
and i'm just going to bake the pies in
those so i'm going to roll out the
pastry
to fill the pastry plates or pastry
dishes or pie dishes or
whatever you want to call them and so
it's pretty simple
don't fear pie dough just take your time
and everything will be okay
i think this is thin enough now
my calculations are correct the diameter
of this bowl
is the right one
for my pie dishes plates whatever you
want to call them
so let's see can i get three
maybe just
so cut those out and
we'll lay it into a dish
oh i think that might just be enough
okay while i'm waiting i'm going to
stick this in the fridge
this is coming together nicely the
filling has a great flavor
i just tasted it i think it's spot on
i've got enough liquid in here to make a
gravy
and i like to thicken at the end with a
bermanier
so that i can really sort of dial in the
thickness without having to water it
down
and lose some of that flavor i find that
if i put flour on the beef ahead of time
i could end up with something that's too
thick at the end and
you know just doesn't taste right so
bermania you've seen me use it before it
is
just equal parts butter and flour mixed
together you soften the butter a little
bit you can even melt the butter
completely in a microwave and then mix
in the flour
and then you mix it into your liquid
here at the end
and really mix it in and you get a nice
thick
velvety smooth sauce so we'll just do
this and then i'm going to let the
filling cool a little bit
before we fill the tins or the pans or
the dishes
i don't know what to call them when
they're just bowls okay the filling is
done and it's you know late december in
canada so i just stuck it outside
chilled down a little bit i'm gonna roll
out the crust for the top crust
and then we'll do the final assembly i
also have to grate some cheese i'm gonna
put some cheddar on top because you know
everything goes better with cheddar
final assembly so i've got the filling
it's chilled down a little bit i've got
some grated cheese
i have an egg wash so just one egg yolk
mixed with a little bit of water
just give that a bit of a fork and we're
gonna brush that on top and around the
edges to seal it
now i probably should have weighed the
amount of beef that i took out of the
fridge i don't know that i have enough
for four i might only get three but
today i'm only gonna cook
two i am going to put the other one or
the other two
into um into the freezer and have them
later
down the line they these pies freeze
really well so
we'll fill up the pie yeah i might get
four that's good
okay so some shredded cheddar
on top
around the edge with some egg wash
that'll just help the
pastry stick together i get a top
piece of pastry
and then i just use the same size bowl
to press them together
usually gives a really nice seal
and then after i've inverted the bowl on
top to press it down i then
fold it back over onto itself to just
sort of seal the edge and give you a
nice
bit around the top and a little bit of
egg wash
and then i'm going to stick these in the
oven to bake and i'll continue on
filling the other two that will go into
the freezer
hold it
hey jules hey glenn i'm just trying to
be uh
cautious of you walking with a knife so
friends uh meat mushroom cheese pie
it's gonna need mushroom and cheese
i was doing the best i could with what
we had in this mozzarella because meat
must
meat mushroom and mozzarella okay maybe
that would be a bad idea meat mushroom
mozzarella the mmm
pie wouldn't that be good damn sadly we
didn't have any mozzarella it's cheddar
that's okay cheddar goes very well with
meat let's cut it open and
see
what it looks like oh looks pretty good
it smells fantastic so it looks really
good it does look really good so let's
cut a couple of
slices out it is fun kind of fun though
because you can put anything in this
right if you had you know corn peas any
vegetables you want
always adding the vegetables
and pie is all about the perfect filling
to crust ratio
that's a pretty good pie mm-hmm that's a
nice savory pie
yeah potatoes you could like so many
things
options there's a real depth of flavor
to that
it's got a really good flavor i'll admit
and i think it's kind of fun that you
cook them in the bowl
yeah i couldn't find the pie chains
i thought we had some in the basement
some little mini ones i couldn't oh yeah
i couldn't find them there you go so
there's other options
a regular little cereal bowl works
just fine so i made i made four total
and there's now
two in the freezer well that'll be handy
so as soon as they're frozen
solid i'm gonna take them out of the
mold and
vacuum seal them so that's 30 day dry
aged beef really
really good really good overkill for
this
you could do this with ground beef the
other little things that i put in there
like that north stock pot and the
marmite
that's what adds that adds that adds a
lot of flavor in the bottom right
and you could use any sort of beef i
mean
chop up some pork and make that uh with
a jerk sauce
yes you could i mean there's always
options right you have it's it's like
anything you need the
correct ratio of crust to filling to
christopher but also the liquid
contents in the middle and you're good
to go so this is a winner
um i'll make it your own make it your
own i'll tweak the recipe a little bit
because i just did this on the fly i
didn't have anything written down
i'll be writing the recipe as i edit the
video to remember what i put in here for
you
so thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you