Christmas Eve Meat Pie

Food-Header-1

MeatPie

For some people it’s a Bing Crosby record or the smell of a freshly cut pine tree, but for me, Christmas has always been our meat pie.

 When people talk about Christmas traditions, this is mine. When the meat is cooking on top of the stove – this is the smell of Christmas to me. I can’t think of anything I’m prouder of figuring out how to make, like many family recipes – this one was never written down. So I’m writing it down.
Grammy
I’m not sure where it originated – as far as I know it was my great grandmother Mary Arsenault Gallant’s recipe. She was from Prince Edward Island – I’ve seen similar recipes to ours, but they’ve all had pie crusts, where we’ve always made ours with bread dough. My grandmother, and then my great aunt Nita continued the tradition, but when I realized that no one in our family expressed any interest, I took it upon myself  to continue our legacy. 
  • BeefandPorkSpoon2 1/2 pounds of stewing beef, cut into chunks
  • 1 1/2 pounds of pork roast, cut into chunks.
  • 1 medium onion chopped fine
  • 2 teaspoons of poultry seasoning (adjust to taste)
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 2 bay leaves
  • kosher salt
  • fresh ground pepper

Place meat and spices into a pot with water and simmer in medium high heat, until meat is falling apart. This takes several hours. Add additional water when needed, do not let it boil dry. Remove bay leaves. Salt and pepper to taste, more poultry seasoning if needed.

Then, you’ll need a recipe for two loaves of white bread. You can do this by hand. I do it in my Cuisinart.

White Bread

  • 1 package dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
  • 1/3 cup warm water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 5 cups white flour
  • 4 tablespoons butter (cut into tablespoon sized pieces)
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/3 cups ice water

Stir yeast and sugar into warm water in a 2 cup measure and let it stand until foamy, 3 to 5 minutes. Use dough blade to process flour, butter and salt for 20 seconds. Add ice water to yeast mixture.

With machine running, pour liquid through the feed tube in steady stream, only as fast as the flour absorbs it. Continue processing until dough cleans inside of work bowl and forms a ball. The let machine run for 60 seconds to knead dough.

Shape dough into a ball and place it in a lightly floured plastic storage bag. Squeeze out air and close end with wire twist. allowing space for dough to rise. Let rise in a warm place until dough has doubled in bulk, about 1 hour, to an hour and a half.

MeatPieFilling

Punch dough down, on a lightly floured surface, take 2/3 of the dough and roll out until it’s big enough to fit in an 9″ x 13″ greased pan and up over the sides. Fill with cooled meat mixture. Roll out remaining dough, cover, fold under bottom crust and pinch together. Cut five slits in top crust to let steam escape. Bake at 350º for one hour.

This entry was posted in Holiday, Lovin' from the Oven, News and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.