I have wanted to make a meat pie for years but for some reason never got around to doing it. Well a few weeks ago I finally did make one and it was just as awesome as I thought it would be. I've always seen meat pies made with steak but I opted for ground turkey because that is what I had in the freezer; I also decided to add a few more veggies into the mix, including green peas, which are pretty much my favorite go to vegetable.
All of the recipes I looked at for inspiration showed this glorious food being baked in a pie plate but I thought it would look cool as a free form pie, a.k.a. galette - also, I didn't think the thing would fit into a standard 9" pie plate. I was a little nervous about making a galette because I wasn't sure if it would stick together or if the filling would spread out while cooking; happily the galette stayed exactly as I shaped it an looked really nifty, kind of rustic and homey.
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| Galette before it is baked - isn't it cool! |
Anyway, below is the recipe for the filling along with my standard pie crust that I have been making for years. This crust has never disappointed me. Although I have heard many people talk about how difficult it is to make pie crust, this recipe has always been kind to me and all the pies I have made with this crust have turned out perfectly, nice and tender and flaky - just the way I like it.
Savory Meat Galette
6 oz Frozen Green Peas
16 oz Ground Turkey
5 Red Potatoes diced
1-2 Onions diced
4-5 Carrots chopped
1 ½ cups (approx) Chicken Broth
2 tablespoons Flour
Olive Oil
Salt
Fresh ground Pepper
Pie Crust (Recipe below)
Roast Potatoes, carrots, and onions in a 400° oven drizzled with olive oil, salt, and pepper for 20 minutes. Cook turkey in a frying pan until browned. Coat peas with flour and put into frying pan with the cooked turkey, continue to cook while adding in broth on low heat to make a gravy. The gravy should just coat everything in the pan with enough to still coat the roasted vegetables. Roll out pie crust until it is slightly thicker than it would normally be for a fruit pie. Put crust onto a large cookie sheet and pour meat and vegetable mixture in the middle, then shape the pie dough around the mixture to form a galette (a fancy name for a pie that is shaped free form). Bake at 375° for about 50 minutes or until crust is browned on the top and sides. Let cool for a few minutes before slicing open and enjoying.
Flaky Pie Crust Recipe (Taken from “The American’s Woman Cook Book” circa 1938)
1 ½ cups Flour
½ teaspoons Salt
½ cup Cold Butter (can use shortening or for extra flavor cold bacon grease)
4-5 tablespoons Ice Cold Water (can sometimes take more – add more as needed)
Put flour and salt into a bowl and cut in the butter with a pie cutter until the butter is in roughly pea sized shapes. Slowly add in water (you don’t want to add to much water or over mix the dough) mixing quickly with a fork until you can shape the dough with your hands and it mostly stays together. The dough will seem a little dry but if you shape it into a ball with your hands and it sticks than it is wet enough to roll out. Roll the dough out until it is less than a ¼ inch thick (the dough should be thick enough to handle whatever you put into it without tearing or breaking). Plain crust should be baked at 400°, but if it has a filling follow the temperature directions for that.
Note on the pie crust: Not mixing the dough too much is very important to a flaky pie crust because the little pellets of butter that aren’t completely mixed into the flour are what make the crust “flake” while baking – making it tender and yummy.
