Savory Meat Pie Fillings

[le petit boucher]

Hello all,

along side our wholesale butchery business we have a production kitchen. i'm sure, all of you having talked to your butchers will know that those who do things properly have a real problem as follows:

you go to significant effort to source the best in locally produced animals, you find them and build up a long working relationship with some great farmers. Next, you buy and kill a bullock using a small local abatoire (which we're very lucky to have as those in the UK will understand!)

Then a chef asks you for 6 whole fillets. problem is your poxy animal came with two! so we need to use much of the rest, for this our little production kitchen makes pies.

I'm currently creating a whole new range of pies for some caterers and retailers (UK) we have a format and a recipe (a really good suet/butter pastry, quite rustic and robust) but what would you like to see put inside them?

[nibor]

curry meat pie

[stephle]

How about a stroganoff or paprikash pie? Meat sliced thin, mushrooms, carmelized onions, some fresh cream+sour cream? If you went lightly on the sauce to make it easily portable I bet this'd be tasty.

[le petit boucher]

If you went lightly on the sauce to make it easily portable I bet this'd be tasty.

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Interesting input, thanks. We actually came up with the format for a very cool pie and mash cafe in Brighton: www.pokeno.co.uk

for them we formulated the pies to have stiff enough fillings to eat on the hoof.

They're recipes draw on international influences, however I was keen to make this range very very english: here are some i'd thought of:

mutton and vegetable

beef cooked in a great local beer (Hepworh & Co)

beef and kidney as above

pork with wild mushroom

do those with any feelings on the english market think this is the way to go? everyone else seems to be into cool, funky, weird pies but my gut says a pie is a pie, and thai green chicken belongs somewhere else!

[chezcherie]

pork and apple....mmmm. especially if you simmer the filling in pear cider. put me down for one of those.

[Adam Balic]

Some native pies would be:

Mutton, onion and apple ("Squab Pie")

Beef and Oyster

Pork, white wine and apple (Cheshire Pork Pie)

Gammon and apple (Fidget Pie)

Rabbit, pork (Stropshire Pie)

Chicken and Gooseberry

Plain Mutton (Glasgow "Tuppenny Struggles")

Monckton Milne Mutton and Oyster Pie (originally a pudding)

You could do a variation on a hotpot, but with a pastry base and a sliced potato lid. Lots of oppertunity for variations (lamb/mutton, oysters, mushrooms, kidney) and makes a change from the mashed potato top.

[emilyr]

I made several pork, sweet potato, red onion and apple pasties to stick in the freezer in college. These go great wtih a mustardy sweet sauce. I always did the sauce after and put the filling in raw, but I'm sure you you could cook the filling in the sauce too. I also did a curried fruit sauce/almost chutney/compote to put on top of these (simmered overripe fruit with curry powder, leftover wine and brown sugar).