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Leftover Roast Beef Pie

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Leftover Roast Beef Pie

It’s 1942. The world is at war.

A young handsome Canadian chap with sticky-out ears and a great big cheeky smile has been posted to a military base on the south coast of England. There he falls in love with a beautiful young English woman who looks like Queen Elizabeth. She is driving a bakery van. She returns his love and when the war finishes they get married and he takes her back home to Canada.

These were my grandparents on my mother’s side. I never knew my grandmother has she sadly passed away long before I was born, but I was named Elizabeth because my grandmother looked like the Queen. I don’t know anything else about her other than where she came from in England and that she drove a bakery van, but when I immigrated back across the pond in 1999 I brought with me a handwritten copy of her pie crust recipe.

While growing up my mother used to make meat pies out of leftover roast beef and her mother’s pie crust recipe, written in her own note book as ‘Mum’s Pie Crust’. She had been given my grandmother’s electric meat grinder and in it would go cold, leftover roast beef, a carrot and an onion. Any leftover gravy (always made with Bisto gravy granules!) would get poured into the resulting minced meat and spooned into a deep pie dish lined with pastry.

 Leftover Roast Beef Pie

Any leftovers would get made into little sausage rolls, and oh my, the combination of this lard-filled pastry crust encasing the minced meat mixture….  pure childhood heaven. If we were lucky we’d get a slice of this pie, cold, in our packed lunches and it was like Christmas every time this happened.

Leftover Roast Beef PieI stopped making the pie crust years ago, preferring a lighter, flakier butter shortcrust pastry, but I still have this recipe in my notebook. Recently I had some leftover cold roast beef in the fridge and I thought I would try and recreate this recipe from my childhood, with a few of my own adaptations, of course. The original recipe is double what I’ve written for here and calls for lard, but I have a suspicion my mother used to use Crisco shortening in hers instead. If doubling, use a whole egg instead of two yolks (as written in the original recipe).

Here’s what I made, just as I remember, and my family loved it (although they do prefer a butter shortcrust pastry as well)! Serve with potatoes, veg and some Cape Breton Chow Chow for an authentic Canadian childhood taste!

Leftover Meat Pie
by Elizabeth
A nostalgic recipe from my Canadian childhood – leftover roast beef pie.
Ingredients
For the pastry
    • 450 grams plain flour
    • 226 grams lard
    • 2 tsp light brown muscovado sugar
    • 1/2 tsp baking soda
    • fat pinch of salt
    • 2 tsp white vinegar
    • 1 egg yolk (reserve white for glaze)
    • 1 tsp ice water
For the filling
  • 350 grams leftover roast beef, finely chopped (or ground)
  • 1 onion, finely chopped (or minced)
  • 1 carrot, finely chopped (or minced)
  • 100 ml leftover gravy (see here for recipe)
  • salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
1. Prepare pastry by mixing all the dry ingredients together and then rubbing in the lard with your fingertips until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Add the egg yolk, vinegar and enough ice water to bind. Knead gently and leave to chill for a half an hour in the fridge.
3. Prepare the filling by either finely chopping the beef, onion and carrot, or running them through a meat grinder if you have one.
4. Add the gravy to bind and season well with plenty of salt and pepper.
5. Grease a pie plate or a 6.5″ baking tin with a removable base. Preheat oven to 220 C.
6. Roll out half the pastry on a floured surface and place in the prepared pan. Using lard I found the dough fell apart quite a bit, so just press it into place if need be.
7. Using a fork prick holes all over the base of the pastry, and then spoon the filling on top.
8. Roll out the remaining pastry to form a lid.
9. Glaze with the remaining egg white beaten with 1 tsp milk. Use a knife to cut vents in the pastry lid.
10. Place pie in the bottom two thirds of the pre heated oven and bake for 30 minutes.
11. Serve warm, with the remaining gravy. Tastes excellent cold the next day too.
Details

Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: Serve 8

As the root of this recipe is my English grandmother’s pie crust, I am linking up with Chris’ Bloggers Around the World challenge. This month features Great Britain!

Made with Love Mondays, hosted by Javelin Warrior

Tasty Tuesdays on HonestMum.com

Comments

  1. Dear Elizabeth,
    I loved your story of your grandparents, my story is similar , my father was a Canadian Army man, stationed in London, met my mother Kathleen , they married in my mothers back garden in 1945. Then he brought home to Canada. I grow up on British food here in Canada. I am proud to be part English . I really enjoy your stories and recipes .
    Best wishes,
    Jennifer

    Reply

  9. This sounds deicious! I love leftover meals, they are always so flavoursome #tastytuesdays

    Reply

    • Leftovers can certainly be made into something quite lovely, but I assure you I’ve made quite a few failed recipes too! 😀

      Reply

  10. I want a slice, Elizabeth! I’ve never had a roast beef pie (or any meat/pastry pie before), but this sounds so good, especially in cold winter months. And I’m with your family – I prefer a butter pastry over lard…

    Reply

  12. I love a good pie and just reading your post makes me want a pie. I think, I didn’t have enough pie in my life so far. This pie sounds delicious. Thanks to you, it is already automatically bookmarked in Bloggers Around the World.

    Reply

  13. I love reading about recipes that are recreated from childhood memories. I remember some really good pies my mum and grandmother used to make but I don’t make them myself nearly as often as I should.

    Reply

    • There’s something about childhood recipes which evokes such pleasure. Everything tasted so much better back then. 🙂

      Reply

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