Category: recipe

Pitman Imperial Irish Meat Pie

Imperial Irish Meat PieOur first meat pie in our new house called for a new recipe. So in addition to all the meat pie recipes I’ve done in the past, I incorporated parts of an Irish Stout Pie and BBC’s Proper beef, ale, & mushroom pie.

Here’s what I did!

Pitman Imperial Irish Meat Pie

  • 2 pounds of chuck
  • Flour
  • Bacon fat
  • 2 carrots
  • 2 celery stalks
  • 2 onions
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 cup mushrooms
  • Beef bullion
  • 12 ounces Lagunita Imperial Stout
  • 2 tablespoons raisins
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • Salt & Pepper
  • 2 pie crusts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  1. Cut the steak into 1/2 inch cubes and sprinkle with flour. Then brown in bacon fat in a skillet. Salt and pepper to taste.
  2. Transfer the steak into a pot.
  3. Sautée onions in skillet (add more bacon fat if necessary). Add carrots, celery, and mushrooms in skillet and let cook. Add bullion, beer, and garlic cloves. Let all simmer. Salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Add the brown sugar and raisins.
  5. If you got a bigger bottle of beer, sip some of the extra.
  6. Pour skillet contents into pot with steak.
  7. Cover pot and cook in oven for 2 to 2.5 hours. Stir occasionally.
  8. Once the stew is done, take out and heat the oven to 400 degrees.
  9. Place one crust in a pie pan and put in oven for 8-10 minutes until somewhat brown.
  10. Spoon stew into pie and cover with second crust. (I cut slits in the top of the second crust.)
  11. Cook in oven for 15-20 minutes until brown.
  12. Let sit for a few minutes. Then cut and enjoy!

The Pitman Imperial Stout Meat Pie is definitely a great pie. I liked the mushroom mix I picked up at the new Lowe’s grocery store near us. It included shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Next time I will probably sprinkle on cheddar cheese before putting the second crust on top.

Yes, there will definitely be a next time!

Thanksgiving Leftovers Savory Muffin Recipe

Wondering what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers?

Yesterday, I wondered about using some Thanksgiving leftovers to make muffins.


Today, I created some! My base for the recipe was a Savory Sausage, Cheese and Oat Muffins recipe over on AllRecipes.com. But I made some modifications.

Thanksgiving Leftovers Savory Muffin Recipe

1 1/4 C unbleached flour (we like King Arthur)
3/4 C old fashioned rolled oats
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder (heaping)
1 tsp onion powder (heaping)
1/3 C butter (melted)
1 egg (beaten)
1 C milk (we use skim)
1 – 2 C leftover turkey (cut into small pieces)
1/2 – 3/4 C grated extra sharp cheddar (we like Cabot New York Extra Sharp)
Some cranberry sauce (the canned variety)

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
  2. Mix the dry ingredients.
  3. In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients (but wait to add the turkey and cheese).
  4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until the dry ingredients are moistened.
  5. Fold in the turkey and cheese.
  6. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin.
    • Put some batter in to cover the base.
    • Add a spot of cranberry sauce.
    • Cover over the cranberry sauce with batter on top and sides.
      Putting the cranberry sauce in the Thanksgiving Leftovers Savory Muffins
  7. Put the tin in the oven until the muffins are brown. I found this took about 15 minutes.
  8. Let tin cool on rack for 5 minutes.

The results? Yumminess!

Since it’s basically a turkey and cheese sandwich, I tried one with mustard. That made a nice lunch.

Thoughts for the next time I make the Thanksgiving Leftovers Savory Muffins

These are moister than the normal chocolate chip and oat muffins I make every week. Next time I will let the muffins cool out of the muffin tin but on the wire rack before putting them on a plate.

Also, next time I will try using vegetable oil instead of melted butter. And I think I’ll add more cranberry sauce – the sweetness was nice. (I didn’t want to over do it this time and was very pleased that none of the sauce leaked out!)

To see more goofy pictures of the Lego muffin guy, look out for the #weeklymuffin on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.
Thanksgiving Leftovers Savory Muffin Success

December Meat Pie: The Culmination of 2011

It’s hard to believe that I’ve reached the last meat pie in my meat-pie-a-month journey! I’ve now made dozens of meat pies. So this this month, I chose to take a risk. I chose to make a pie without consulting any recipes.

Here’s what I made and how I made it:

2 pounds of steak (chopped into small pieces)
3 potatoes (Maine of course! Yukon Gold are amazing)
3 carrots
1 large onion
1 cup of beef broth
3-4 strips of bacon (I used premade bacon bits)
garlic salt
garlic powder
fresh pepper
2 bottles of beer

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

  1. Open a beer and take a sip. (I’m particular to porters.)
  2. Peel the potatoes and bring them to boil. I like to sprinkle some garlic salt
    into the water.
  3. Peel and chop up the carrots and onions.
  4. Test the potatoes with a fork. Mash them if tender.
  5. Put some oil in the skillet and brown the meat.
  6. Add in the carrots, onion, broth, and the other beer.
  7. Add some garlic salt and pepper. I like large amounts of each.
  8. Cover skillet and simmer for 20 minutes (until the carrots are soft).
  9. Take of the cover and allow it to simmer down. I liberally added garlic powder here. Stir occasionally.
  10. Enjoy the sound of your kids saying how amazing the house smells!
  11. After a while, I threw in some flour to thicken it up.
  12. Check that first beer. Sip if needed.
  13. Take the skillet off the heat and stir in the mash potatoes.
  14. Spoon this mixture into the pie crust. (There might be too much. Don’t feel compelled to make it all fit.)
  15. Sprinkle the bacon over the top. I added a few pats of butter so the mixture wouldn’t be too dry.
  16. Cover with the top crust and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. (Covering the edges of the crust for all but the last 10 minutes.)

The house smelled as great as the pie tasted! A perfect end to a year of meat pies!

I’m definitely keeping this recipe. Next time, I’ll add mushrooms.

Some pictures from the process

The year in review

January: New Zealand Bacon & Egg Pie
February: New Zealand Beef & Onion Pie
March: St. Patty’s Day Steak, Guinness, & Cheese Pie
April: Cornish Pasties
May: Blokes Who Bake “Easy Peasy” Pie
June: Traditional New Zealand Shepherd’s Pie
July: Butcher Dan’s Tourtiere Pie
August: Steak, Guinness, Cheese, & BACON Pie
September: 3 Meat Pie Month
October: My own creation: a beef, bacon, red wine, and cheese pie
November: My take on “Dad’s Favorite Aussie Pie”

November Meat Pie: Another Recipe with Wine

I enjoyed last month’s pie so much that I went looking for another pie with wine. I stumbled across this recipe for Dad’s Favorite Aussie Pie on the website for Greg Norman Estates Wine.

Ingredients
1 lb ground sirloin
1 lb ground lamb
1 medium yellow onion, diced small
2 large carrots, cleaned and diced small
2 large celery stalks, cleaned and diced small
2 cloves garlic, small diced
2 cups fresh or frozen green peas
1 cup red wine
½ cup beef broth
3 Tbsp Worcheshire Sauce
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 Tbsp dried oregano
2-4 Tbsp all-purpose flour
Freshly made pastry dough or 2 sheets store-bought pastry dough
1 Tbsp Extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 egg

Not being into lamb, I opted for 2 pounds of ground beef.

The recipe calls for sautéing the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic until slightly soft. Then you add in the meat. Once it is fully cooked, you add the rest of the stuff.

The recipe calls for putting the pie that is ready for the oven on a cookie sheet. I sure wish I’d done that! This pie was so moist that it bubbled over and left a coating on the bottom of the oven. Whoops!

Aside from that, this was an amazing pie!

Next time, I’ll put a cookie sheet underneath it…or remember to clean up the oven when I’m done. 🙂

October Meat Pie: My own creation

This year, I’ve been making a meat pie a month.

This month I created my own: a beef, bacon, red wine, and cheese pie. (Gotta work on the name.) I’d made pies with beer but not wine so I used some of the Fish Eye Shiraz we had in the box on our counter. I took some tips from this steak and ale pie recipe.

The ingredients were:

a couple pounds of chop steak
a pound of bacon
a couple onions, chopped
mushrooms, chopped
a cup of wine (Fish Eye Shiraz)
a cup of beef broth
some Worcestershire sauce
some thyme
a dash of nutmeg
fresh ground pepper
flour to thicken the gravy
pre-made crust

I cooked the bacon. Then I carmelized the onions in the same pan. I set them aside to make room to brown the steak. Then I added the onions back in and about a 1/3 cup of flour. Then wine and broth and mushrooms all went in and it simmered for a couple hours. (I added more flour to make it thicker.)

I also cut up 4-5 strips of bacon and added it to the simmering stew.

While that was going, I made some mashed sweet potatoes. (Having just heard Paula Deen on NPR, I added a stick of butter when I mashed it.)

I put the stew in the pie crust and topped it with more bacon and a handful of cheddar cheese. It baked at 400 for 40 minutes. (I brushed egg on the crust just to be fancy. And no, not all the bacon went into the pie. Some mysteriously disappeared in the process.)

Another very tasty pie! A little dry, it probably didn’t need to simmer so long. But still very tasty!

10 down; 2 to go!

September Meat Pie(s)


This month’s meat pie turned into 3 pies:

  1. My daughter wanted another bacon and egg pie.
  2. But the recipe seemed so easy, I tried a new steak pie.
  3. And threw in a cheese and onion for good measure.

We were eating pie for days!

The bacon and egg is just that: 6-7 eggs, lots of bacon, and some cheese in a pie crust.

The cheese and onion was simply puff pastries (I used croissant dough) filled with cheese and onions. These tasted better in subsequent days.

The steak pie was made of:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound cubed steak
1 large onion, chopped
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 pinch salt and pepper to taste
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed (I used croissant dough)

Puff pastry must mean something else in other parts of the world. These with croissant dough were very different.

But very yummy!

August Meat Pie: Guinness, Steak, Cheese, & BACON

Today this

became this!

Out of all the ones I’ve made so far this year, the March Steak & Guinness pie has been my favorite. So I decided to make it again, but this time with bacon!

Here are the ingredients:

1.5 lbs New York sirloin (sort of diced)
3 onions sliced
Sprig of rosemary
6 cloves of garlic – minced
2 sticks celery – finely sliced
2 carrot sticks – finely sliced
6-8 baby portabella mushrooms – sliced
1 bottle Guinness Extra Stout
1 heaping tbsp flour
1 cup beef stock
1 cup of crushed up bacon
2 cups shredded white cheddar cheese

You brown the meat and sautee the onions in a pot. Then you add the other ingredients to make a nice stew. (But only add enough of the beef stock to just barely cover the meat.)

Than you cook the stew in the oven at 350 degrees F for a couple hours. Then you add half the cheese and mix it. Finally, pour it into the pie crust, top with the rest of the cheese, then bake at 350 for another 40-45 minutes.

Viola! Not only does your house smell great, you get a great tasting pie. 🙂