When I was a child, we always went to Midnight Mass with Mum, not when we were very little but once we were old enough to sit still. While we were at Mass with Mum, Dad would heat up a Christmas meat pie and when we got home from Mass, we would have some meat pie, some sweets and sometimes would get to open a present before going to bed. My mother always called her pies "tourtiere" but when I was posted to Quebec, I found out that they weren't.
A tourtiere is made with a mix of ground meats and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. My mother's meat pie had chunks of chicken, pork and beef and was flavoured mainly with summer savory. I was told that her mother's recipe used tea biscuit dough for the pie pastry but that my father found this too heavy, so she started making her pies with regular pie dough.
So, with COVID when everyone seemed to be baking, I thought I would try to recreate her meat pies. My mother didn't have a recipe, she just knew it by heart. I found out there are as many recipes as there are Acadian families. The first year, I made one pie and it used some of the spices that you find in a tourtiere. It was good but didn't bring back those childhood memories. Last year, I made pies that just used summer savory and oregano, they were much closer in taste, but do you think I wrote down how I made them. This year I again edited the recipe and I think that I have something that's pretty close. I used three or four different recipes that I found online to come up with mine.
My Acadian meat pie is made with a center pork roast, chicken breast and chicken thighs. This year I used a small pork roast, three boneless chicken breasts and six boneless chicken thighs. You cut all the meat up into chunks, a half inch or bigger. If you use bone in chicken breasts and thighs, take as much meat off of the bone as you can. You put all the meat including the bones into a pot and cover with chopped onion, about a cup of onion will do. Fill the pot with water until all the meat is covered, I had water about an inch over the meat and onions. To this you add, some salt and pepper about a half to a teaspoon; then cover it all with summer savory. The picture below is not mine but from one of the recipes I used for inspiration. It has to be summer savory, which isn't always easy to find if you're not in the Maritimes.
You bring this to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally. You may have to add more water, some recipes say to just cover the meat, but I always put more water than that in the pot. This year, after the mixture had simmered for about an hour, I added a tablespoon each of oregano and of coriander seed as well as two packets of chicken bouillon powder. If you've used bone in chicken, you'll have to remove all the bones, allow them to cool a bit and pull off the rest of the meat, which is why I used boneless. Now you let it continue to simmer, until the meat, especially the chicken breast breaks down. Then you have to let the filling chill for several hours, I let it chill overnight. If your filling, after chilling, is still watery, you can pour out the broth and with some flour and butter make a bit of gravy and mix it back into the meat mixture. Again, not my picture but the meat filling will look something like this before chilling.
This year I had enough filling to make three pies and some mini tarts. One pie is a little light on filling though as I still had meat mixture left after making the first two pies and the tarts, so I bought another pie shell. I guess I should learn how to make pie dough. My mother did have a Never Fail Pie Crust recipe, but it made enough dough for five double crust pies. I made it once and it worked the first time, but I never really needed five pies at one time, although she did say you could freeze the dough.
You fill your pie shells with the meat mixture, cutting some vents or poking holes in the top crust. Some people add an egg wash to the top crust, but I didn't. The pies are baked at 350F for 40 to 50 minutes or until the crust is golden.
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| The result |
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| Mini Meat pies |
The meat pies can be frozen and reheated. If you've thawed them, it takes about 30 minutes at 350F, if they're frozen it will take quite a bit longer. These pies will be part of our Christmas Eve supper. My sister and brother-in-law make my mother's Acadian meat pie as well as his family's tourtieres for Christmas and I'm sure they will be on the menu Christmas Day.
Making the meat pies made me think of my mum and dad making Christmas meat pies and all the other holiday treats we enjoyed that made Christmas so special. To paraphrase, Maroon Five's song Memories:
Toast to the ones here today,
Toast to the ones that we lost on the way,
Cause the food brings back memories,
And the memories bring back memories of you.
