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The Québécois meat pie eaten at réveillon, the meal after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Ground pork, sometimes with beef or veal, bound with potato and seasoned with a specific and unusual spice bill: cinnamon, cloves and allspice in a savoury pie, which is a survival of medieval French cooking.
Regional versions differ sharply. The Lac-Saint-Jean tourtière is a deep pie of cubed game and potato baked for six hours; the Montreal version below is the shallow, everyday one.
What makes it work
- Warm spices in a savoury filling. Cinnamon, clove, allspice and savory — the herb — in with the pork. It sounds wrong and it is the entire identity of the dish. See Spices.
- Grated potato or breadcrumbs bind it. A boiled, mashed potato stirred through absorbs the fat and stops the filling crumbling when cut.
- Cook the filling, then cool it. Twenty minutes' simmering with stock, cooled fully before the pastry goes on.
- A little liquid left in the filling. Not dry — the potato will take up more as it cools.
- Lard in the pastry is traditional and gives the right sturdy, savoury crust; see baking fats.
Ingredients
One 23 cm double-crust pie. Serves 8.
- 1 batch all-butter pie crust, preferably half butter and half lard
- 700 g ground pork
- 250 g ground beef or veal
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 celery stick, finely diced
- 250 ml chicken or beef stock
- 1 large potato, boiled and mashed, about 200 g
- 5 g ground cinnamon
- 2 g ground cloves
- 3 g ground allspice
- 2 g ground savory or thyme
- 8 g fine salt, plenty of black pepper
- 1 egg, beaten
Method
Cook the onion, garlic and celery in a little fat until soft, eight minutes.
Add both meats and cook, breaking them up, until no pink remains. Add the stock, the spices, salt and pepper, and simmer uncovered 20 minutes, until most of the liquid has gone.
Stir in the mashed potato. Taste and season hard — a cold filling tastes flatter than a hot one, and this pie is often served cold.
Cool completely.
Heat the oven to 200 °C / 400 °F. Line the tin, fill, lay the top crust over, seal, crimp, and cut vents. Glaze with egg.
Bake 20 minutes at 200 °C, then 180 °C / 350 °F for 30–35 minutes, until deep gold.
Rest 20 minutes before cutting.
Notes
- Served with ketchup, chili sauce or pickled beets in Québec, and the acid genuinely helps. See Beets.
- Freezes very well, baked or unbaked, for three months. It is traditionally made in quantity in December.
- Keeps four days refrigerated and is often eaten cold the next day.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Pie and tart recipes · pies and tarts · Spices
Nearby: cornish pasty · steak and ale pie · empanadas