Vegetarians, look away now: Our steak pie recipe
Posted: 28 October '09 by Niall
Steak Pie
With the rain lashing down and a gale blowing outside our front door, we huddled around the fire. As gloomy as this sounds, I wasn’t too down-hearted.. Winter is coming – and this means “goodbye” to salads and “hello” to more substantial dishes. I like that.
A quick trip to Forestside (McGee’s butchers, to be exact) and we were ready to go – Steak Pie was on the cards! Steak pie (but especially steak and kidney pie) is one of those meals-from-childhood that I will always remember with fondness and hanker after: tender pieces of meaty steak, rich gravy, and light, buttery pastry. What could be better..
You can see more photos hereImage 1Image 2Image 3Image 4Image 5
Ingredients:
- 900g/2lb stewing steak, cut into cubes
- plain flour, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper, for dusting
- Beef dripping
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 7.5ml/1/2tbsp tomato purée
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 570ml/1 pint hot beef stock
- 500g of puff pastry (I bought JusRol Puff Pastry 1Kg block and used half – because I love pastry)
- 1 free-range egg, beaten
- Worcestershire sauce
Method:
- Put a good three or four tablespoons of beef dripping into a large saucepan and place on a low heat
- When the dripping has melted, add your onions and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, until the onions become slightly translucent
- Add your cubed stewing steak to the saucepan and cook until the meat has started to colour
- Add 3 or 4 tablespoons of the seasoned flour and stir in thoroughly, and allow the mixture to heat through for a minute or two
- Add the beef stock to the saucepan, increase the heat slightly, and stir until the liquid has become a bubbling, thick sauce
- Reduce the heat so that there is only a slight bubbling of the liquid and allow it to simmer gently for an hour and a half
- Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5
- Taste the sauce at this point (chef’s prerogative!) and add a few splashes of worcestershire sauce and the tomato puree (the worcestershire sauce will really help those meaty flavours along, as does the tomato) – taste again and add more if necessary
- Transfer the filling mixture to an ovenproof dish
- Take some flour and dust your work area and rolling pin – with your block of pastry on the work-area, roll out the pastry so that it is slightly bigger than the area of the casserole dish, and about 1 centimetre thick
- Drape the pastry over the meat filling
- Beat an egg in a bowl and brush the surface of the pastry with the beatebn egg – it’ll give the finished crust a really nice golden colour
- Place your pie in the oven cook for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the pastry has puffed up and is golden-brown
To my mind, you have to serve your steak pie with creamed potatoes to make the most of that gravy – and a glass of claret is a great addition too.
Other information:
You could use olive oil rather than beef dripping – but the dripping is so much tastier. Go on, spoil yourself and use the dripping.
Add 280g of chopped ox or lamb kidney to the stewing steak kidney for a delicious steak and kidney pie.
Tags: english food, red wine
Categories: Recipes
Finding a good butcher is like discovering gold! We’ve tried a few, and usually been disappointed. That said, the stewing steak from McGee’s was excellent – just look at the photos! We’ll definitely be going back there again..