Aussies love a good meat pie. We love the hand-held ones because we get the whole slow cooker beef cheeks in beer to ourselves. But when you’ve got sharing vibes, this Family-size Meat Pie is the one you pull out.
With a shortcrust base, slow-cooked fall-apart chunks of beef are smothered in a rich gravy, topped off with a golden puff pastry lid. There’s plenty of good stuff that falls in between. Or just give Dozer a lot of attention. Actually, this is the most effective method! Buttery and flaky, this pastry type has enough structure to contain the considerable volume of rich filling! Meat Pie, use homemade shortcrust pastry! Your basic meat pie might only be made with beef.
But the addition of mushroom, bacon, celery and carrots only makes it better! Bacon for flavour, mushroom for just general extra-delicious factor. It puts your basic store bought pies to shame! The traditional topping for Meat Pies is puff pastry. You simply can’t top golden, flaky and buttery puff pastry as the lid for a meat pie!
Essential flavour base for the rich sauce. These introduce a bit of non-meat goodness into the filling. Which, while delicious, can be a bit too full-on! Also for sausage rolls, for that matter! It’s sautéed at the beginning so other ingredients can be cooked in the bacon fat. And the bacon releases flavour into the sauce.
But no, it doesn’t taste bacon-y at the end! Guinness Stew that borrows techniques from a French-style stew like Beef Bourguignon. The flavourful stout beer in this recipe is the reason why there are so few ingredients needed for flavour in the sauce. It also gives the sauce the deep, dark brown colour which is part of the appeal of this filling.
