Wednesday 6 August 2008

Meat Pie

Aussies love a good meat pie. Apparently there's nothing like a pie and sauce at the footy. I don't know about that. I don't enjoy footy. But I do like a piping hot meat pie....without the sauce. Yeah, I don't like that either LOL. Unfortunately bought pies are not that healthy. However, when I was losing weight by attending Weight Watchers meetings about 10 years ago one of their recipe books had a fabulous meat pie recipe. The recipe calls for using filo pastry. If you're going to buy pastry anyway, then this would be my vote. It's nice and light and crispy. When I make this for dinner this week I'll be making my own pastry, because it's cheaper and I get to control what I put in there.


Meat Pie

450g minced beef
1 1/2 cups carrot, grated
150g potatoes, grated
1 cup parsnip, grated
1 cup water
2 teaspoons beef stock powder
1 tablespoon cornflour
salt & pepper
11 sheets filo pastry
  1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F and coat a 23cm pie plate with cooking spray.
  2. Brown mince in a non stick pan. Add carrot, potato, parsnip, 1/2 cup water and stock cubes to pan. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until vegetables are tender, adding more water if necessary. Thicken with cornflour dissolved in a little water, ensuring that mixture is not runny. Season to taste and cool slightly.
  3. Line pie plate with 6 sheets of filo, folding to fit the dish and spraying each layer lightly with cooking spray. Pour filling into pastry case and top with remaining pastry, folding to fit. Cut a steam slit in the pie and coat with cooking spray.
  4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.
Enjoy!

I'm now off to pick up Mr Busy who is apparently feeling more miserable than I gave him credit for! He'll be 'enjoying' an afternoon nap I think.

5 comments:

Suzanne said...

Thanks for visiting my blog. Glad to have found yours and a new recipe for meat pie! Being half French I grew up on one I still make called Tourtierre. It is beef/pork and is seasoned with cinnamon and cloves--heaven:-)

Left-Handed Housewife said...

This sounds wonderful! I'll try it as soon as the weather cools down here. Weight Watchers has so many great recipes (I have one similar to this, only it's with chicken). I try to practice a modified version of WW (I lost 35 pounds on WW from 3006-2007--sad to say some of it's come back) and dip into my WW cookbooks quite frequently.

Anonymous said...

Yummo! I love home-made meat pies. I'll have to put this on next week's menu.

Kate

Aprille Roberts said...

Okay Tracy, I hope you don't think I'm an idiot, but I have never heard of cornflour - what is that? Also, I can't get a parsnip, is that something I could leave out, or is it essential to the recipe?

Thank you for posting this for me!!!

Love,
April :0)

Tracy said...

Parsnip looks like a white carrot. They're readily available over here, but I am pretty sure they're more a winter vegie, so you may find it during that season. It does add to the flavour, but you can leave it out without any problems at all.

Cornflour I think is what you call cornstarch. A thickening ingredient. You could just use ordinary flour, if you put it in when you're browning the meat.