This pie has become a family favourite! Its hearty, nutritious and filling and can easily to feed a crowd. The tallow is a wonderful addition to the pie pastry and makes a lovely crisp, layered crust.
Pie Pastry (This pastry can be used for sweet and savoury pies)
Ingredients
- 125g Tallow (frozen)
- 1 Large Egg
- 15ml Vinegar
- Refrigerated Water
- 750 ml Flour
- 15ml Sugar (only when baking sweet pastries, omit otherwise)
- 5ml Salt
How to make it:
- Start by mixing together the egg, vinegar and enough cold water to make 125ml of liquid.
- In your food processor, combine half of the flour with the sugar and salt.
- Add frozen tallow and pulse until tallow resembles small peas. Then add the rest of the flour and pulse some more to combine.
- Slowly add the cold liquid to the flour mixture while pulsing. You may not use all the liquid, use just enough to combine it all.
- Empty out the mixture onto a dry surface and lightly roll it into a ball. Don’t handle it too much or the tallow will melt.
- Divide the dough into two portions, cover and refrigerate for an hour.
- Roll out your pastry to fit your greased pie dish and then lay it inside the dish. This mixture is enough for two 24cm pie dishes.
When making a pie, we use the one portion of pastry for the bottom crust and use the second portion to cover the filling. Any extra pieces of dough can be cut into all sorts of wonderful shapes and used to decorate the top of the pie.
The Filling
Don’t be limited by a recipe – any stew type filling wrapped between these two layers of pie pastry will make a delicious pie. Our favourite filling is a short-rib stew and 1kg of short rib is enough to make a pie for 6 people. After slowly simmering the shortrib for a few hours with some cayenne pepper, salt and bay leaves it is quite tender and almost ready to fall of the bone. At this point we add our favourite veggies and other spices. Carrots, onions, fresh garlic, green beans, celery and mushrooms are some of our favourites. Cook the stew mix until the veggies are cooked and thicken your gravy with your favourite thickener. Runny gravy makes for a soggy pie, a nice thick gravy is a real winner.
Blind bake the bottom pastry at 220ºC for 15 min before adding the filling and covering it up with the top layer of pastry. Join the top and bottom layers of pastry together by pinching them or pressing them together against the side of your dish. Make sure its nicely joined so your sauce doesn’t leak out. Also remember to cut a few slits into the top pastry so the steam can escape while its cooking.
Bake the finished pie for another 25 min.
We’ve also used this pastry to make individual pies and they were a huge hit! Cook up your favourite pie filling (chicken, Cornish, steak ‘n kidney) and make your pies and sausage rolls as big or small as you’d like them to be.