Hey, dudes.
I'm Hilah.
And today on Hilah Cooking's Christmas Around the World we're headed to the land of sasquatches
and maple syrup and partially legalized weed.
That's right.
It's Canada.
Oh, Canada.
And I'm going to show you how to make a tourtiere.
I'm pretty sure that's how you pronounce it.
It's a French Quebecois meat pie.
And it's quite delicious and savory, and I'm very excited to show it to you because I made
them in little miniature sizes, and they're really cute.
For the meat filling, I've got about a pound of ground pork here, and I'm going to add
some cold water.
We're just going to sort of break the pork up in the water as it comes up to a simmer.
This recipe came to me from Sharon.
She emailed it to me.
She said she makes this every year.
It's a traditional Christmas dish.
To me, it kind of reminds me of the British mince pie because it's got a lot of those
same spices that are usually associated with like gingerbread and sweet things.
So, it's a good mix of savory and sweet.
There's a ton of variations.
Some people use veal or venison, but I think there's always some kind of pork in there
no matter what.
So, just get this broken up.
It's unusual that it's not browned first.
I saw some recipes that were and some that weren't.
So, let's do it this way.
Contrary to the wives' tale, you don't have to brown ground meat before you cook it.
It's not going to make you sick or anything.
So, we're just going to kind of keep stirring this around until that water starts to simmer.
Okay.
So, once you've got some little bubbles coming up here, like that, we're going to add celery
and onion that's chopped up pretty fine.
I use quite a bit of the celery leaves also.
Our warm spices, which are cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.
I'll turn my heat down to medium.
Then, the herbs we've got are thyme, rosemary, bay leaf, and some black pepper, technically
a spice.
Just mix all this in here.
I'm not going to add any salt yet.
We'll add salt about halfway through the cooking process.
Okay.
So now, I'm just going to cover this and put the heat down to a medium-low.
Then, we're going to let it simmer for about an hour.
Give it a stir every ten or 15 minutes.
[music].
Alright.
So, it's been an hour.
About 30 minutes in, I added my salt.
This is what I've got here.
So, when you're checking it as it's cooking, if you notice that too much water is cooking
off, and it's getting really dry, then you can add a little bit of water as it's cooking.
At this point, I'm going to add in some oatmeal, the filler that's used.
It's really just to sort of help keep all the meat together.
So, you're not using a whole lot.
Sometimes, people use potato.
You could just grate up a potato and add that, or breadcrumbs also are used.
You just want to get the oatmeal kind of absorbing some of that liquid.
If you were using a raw potato or something, you'd want to cook it until the potato was
done, obviously.
But, since oatmeal just kind of cooks really fast, I'm just going to go ahead and turn
this off now.
I'm going to let it cool.
While this is cooling, you can go ahead and roll out your pie crust for your dough.
You'll need a top and a bottom crust for each pie.
So, I'm going to let this cool.
I'm going to roll out some pie crust and see you back for the assembly and the baking.
Alright.
So, this filling has cooled off a little bit, and I've got my little trays here lined with
pastry.
I'm using little mini ones because I did a little bit of drunk shopping on the Internet
and decided to treat myself.
So, if you wanted to use a regular nine inch pie pan, that's fine.
Otherwise, it'll fill three little of these mini, I think it's like a four inch pie.
Anyway, whatever.
So, we're just going to fill it up with this.
You could even make the filling a day ahead of time if you wanted to.
So, once all your little pans are filled, I've got a little egg white here.
I'm just going to go around the edges of each of these and plop down one of my discs.
Get it centered.
Yeah.
Then, just kind of press it down.
Get a little more egg white and go around the outer edge.
Then, kind of fold it up and press it.
You're trying to press it together with the bottom crust, with the edge to the bottom
crust there.
Okay.
We'll do the next one.
[music].
Alright.
Then, I'm going to show you-- If you want to make them a little bit fancier, I'm going
to show you how to do a little holly leaf decoration for the top of these.
So, I've got a small scalloped cutter.
To make a little leaf shape out of a round shape, just go in like halfway.
Whoa.
That was weird.
Then, cut it the other direction, like that.
Then, you end up with this little sort of a holly leaf.
It's implicative of a holly leave.
So, we'll set that aside and make a few more of these.
Okay.
So, we've got six little holly leaves.
And then, if you want to get super anal, you can get a straw and use just a regular drinking
straw to poke out some little holly berries.
So, I just do this.
Hopefully, it sticks in the straw, and then you can kind of pop it out like that.
Hopefully, that doesn't gross you all out.
So, I'll make a few of those.
Okay.
Then, we'll use some of our little egg to sort of glue the leaves on top.
[music].
Then, after your decorating them is over, you got to make sure you also cut some slits
in the top.
It's going to let the steam and the liquid escape as they're cooking.
Four should be good.
Just use the tip of the knife to kind of make a little X in the middle.
Alright.
Then finally, last thing.
We're going to brush the whole tops of everything with a little bit of your egg, and that's
just going to make sure that they get nice and shiny.
They'll look really pretty.
Alright.
Once your pies are looking like this, they're ready to go in the oven.
I'm going to put them in at 425, for 15 minutes, and then reduce the heat to 375, for 20 minutes
for these guys, more like 25 or 30 if you're doing a whole nine inch pie.
I'll show you what that looks like when we get there.
It's tourtiere time.
So, I've taken them out.
They've cooled for a couple of hours.
So, they're handleable.
Then, once they're done, you can just tip them out of their little tins.
This is what the finished one looks like.
I'm really excited to cut it open and show you what it looks like inside.
For this recipe and tons of other recipes and information, check out Hilahcooking.com.
And don't forget, I've also got three cookbooks in print right now, available through my website
or on Amazon.
So, I'll put a link to that.
Let's see what this guy looks like on the inside.
You're beautiful on the outside, tourtiere, but how beautiful are you on the inside?
Let's hope it's pretty beautiful.
Always so nerve racking.
Oh.
It smells awesome.
I'll tell you that much.
There we go.
A little pork pie for my Canadian buddies.
Alright.
I'm going to taste it.
I'm going to taste your pork pie, Canada.
Wow.
This is beautiful.
This is serious comfort food.
What a great tradition.
Thank you so much, Sharon, for sharing that recipe with me.
I'll see you all next time.
Thanks so much for watching and have a wonderful Christmas.
Bye.