Amck, It wouldn't be Christmas Eve without this Tourtiere. Moe loves his with

Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table

Tourtiere
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This filling is for one pie. I usually triple the ingredients and make three at a time. I bake all of the pies and when cold freeze.

pastry to two crust pie.

1 large onion chopped
2 or 3 tablespoons oil or butter
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 pounds of pork
1 cup gravy or stock (saved from turkey or pork)
2 russett potatoes (par boiled)
2 Tablespoons chopped celery leaves
2 Tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon thyme,
1/2 teaspoon rosemary (or more)
salt and pepper to taste
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon allspice, more to taste

.
Saute the onion in oil until transparent, add the garlic and saute for
one minute and then add the ground pork. Cook until the meat is brown.
Add 1/2 cup stock or gravy and cover pan and simmer for about 15 or 20
minutes. Preheat oven to 425°F

Uncover pan and reduce liquid to 2 or 3 tablespoons. Add the
seasonings and stir to blend.Adjust seasonings to taste. Add potatoes
and add enough additional gravy to moisten. Should not be to wet.

Spoon filling into pastry shell. Use egg glaze on along overhand.
Place crust on top and trim. Fold the top edge under the bottom and
crimp edge. Brush with egg glaze and decorate with extra pastry if
desired. Sprinkle with Coarse salt.

Bake in the lower third of oven for 15 minutes and then raise to the
middle shelf, lower heat to 350 and continue to bake until golden
brown. About 45 to 55 minutes.

Butter-Lard Pastry
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2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup lard (or shortening- Crisco)
5 to 6 tablespoons of ice water

(note: if using for a sweet pie, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar.)
. Mix flour with salt, and cut in butter and lard.

(Note: I use the cuisinart to cut in my fat and then move the mixture
to a bowl to add the water by hand).
I like to have to do this by feel which I find I can't do by machine)

Put flour mixture in bowl and add water mixing with a fork until pastry
comes together. Form in to a ball and cut in two pieces. Form each
into a round flat disc and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Ann,
If made ahead of time, do you serve hot or cold?
This is a new recipe for me, but looks delicious!

Grace

Grace, I usually make them on Christmas Eve Day. All three get baked. And then two of the pies get wrapped in plastic and then in foil and are frozen and the one we are having for dinner gets put back in the oven to warm up for dinner. It should be served heated. Not cold or room temperature.

They keep in the freezer for months and I just let the tourtiere come to room temperature and then warm up in the oven.

Ann

Thanks Ann - The tourtiere was always served AFTER Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve when I was growing up. DH found that hard to believe - people eating pork pie at 2 a.m.! Funny that it never seemed odd to us since most families celebrated that way in the town where I was raised.

These days (past 20 yrs.) we congregate at my Mom's around 6pm, chat, enjoy appetizers and open gifts and then around l0pm the tourtiers are served.

I have one question regarding your recipe. It doesn't appear that your potatoes are mashed in with the meat mixture - most of the local bakeries here seem to use mashed potatoes in theirs. My mom uses a potato masher when she mixes them in with the meat, but still leaves identifyable, but not bite sized, potato pieces in hers. What size are your potatoes once you've incorporated them into the meat mixture?

My mom is well known for her meat pies in our family.

She uses a mixture of ground pork and ground beef. The potatoes are cooked with the meat and then mashed on the side of the pot with a fork.

Tourtières
(Meat Pies)

Traditionally, this is eaten hot after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Serve piping hot with or without ketchup.

1½ lbs ground pork
1½ lbs ground beef
1 onion, finely chopped
2 small potatoes or 1 medium
Salt and pepper, to taste
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp to ½ tsp garlic powder
Small pinch of ground cloves (optional - careful, it can be overpowering)

In large pot over medium-low heat, add ground pork and enough water to cover meat. Peel and chop potatoes into cubes and add to pork mixture. When pork is no longer pink, add ground beef, onions, salt, pepper, cinnamon (careful not to add too much), and garlic powder. Check seasonings to your taste, keeping in mind that the cinnamon and cloves can easily overpower the taste.

If water has evaporated too much, add a little more water. Take a large spoon and press down on the meat mixture to skim off some of the fat; but leave a little fat for flavour. When potatoes are cooked, mash them with a fork against the side of the pot. This will thicken the sauce.

When beef is no longer pink and potatoes are cooked and mashed, itÂs ready to be put into pie shells. The meat will finish cooking in the oven. Make sure you cut slits in the top of the pie to let steam escape while baking. Also make sure that you add some of the broth with the meat but careful not too much or it will be too wet. You just want enough so that the pie is not dried out after baking, but nice and moist!

Bake in 350°F oven for about 40 minutes.

** Pastry: Because this is a meat pie and not a fruit pie, use ¼ less of the shortening in your pastry recipe to allow for the fat in the meat; otherwise, your pastry will be too greasy.

Amck, it was the same in Moe's family. Must have been a French Canadian/Catholic thing. Since I'm not either, we have the Tourtiere at our normal dinner time on Christmas Eve and Christmas gifts aren't open until Christmas morning. (after Santa arrives)

The potatoes are cooked and then coarsely chopped. Not mashed. If you look closely, you can see bits of potatoes in this slice.

Thanks, Ann. Whenever someone tries to pass off the bakery pies as homemade they are always "busted" by the mashed potatoes. The French Canadian contingent insists that that texture is for the meat stuffing for the turkey, which is pronounced something like "faourd" and NOT what they want in a tourtiere.

khandi, your recipe looks like my mother's. She uses both ground beef and pork, which some families think is sacrilege..I chuckled when I read the cautionary notes about not overdoing the cloves, as that has happened a few times over the years. It's a delicate balance, too little and "something" is missing, too much and everyone notices and not in a good way.

I'm going to try Ann T's for an Open House we're having next weekend.

There are so many family traditions when it comes to Tourtiere. For me, I only use pork, but I don't mind a pie made with a mixture of beef and pork. But the one ingredient that is a "must have" is allspice. For me,that is what elevates a meat pie to a Tourtiere. Otherwise it just tastes like a meat pie.

Ann

Tourtiere is one of the few family traditions I've kept up with even though all my extended family is gone now. My husband and some of the children aren't crazy about it BUT I serve it every Christmas Eve. In my younger years, my mother's family all gathered for Reveillon after Midnight Mass and tourtieres were the star of the show. The competition was fierce as to who made the best tourtiere. Aunt Adrienne, Aunt Gert and Aunt Gerry all had their little twists to their recipes and Cousin Suzanne like to throw a curve ball and used diced pork instead of ground in hers. The consensus was Aunt Gert made the best tourtiere, unfortunately she never shared her recipe with any of us.

My generation i.e. the cousins took over tourtiere making 20 years ago and we continued the tourtiere rivalry for another 10 or so years until everyone moved too far away to continue.

I miss the big family Reveillons, the family and the tourtiere rivalry. Hopefully when and if I have grandchildren, I can pass on the tradition to them.

I donÂt really use a recipe when I make my tourtiere, I cook it by smell. I use Aunt AdrienneÂs recipe as an ingredient guide but thatÂs about it. I do put potatoes in while I cook the meat to absorb some of the fat but I donÂt use them in the final product. I too press down on the meat and remove some but not all the fat from the meat. The best tourtiere are the ones made with lard crust but I more often than not get lazy and use the premade rolled pie crust.

Over the years I have amassed a slew of tourtiere recipes, here are just a few:

Aunt AdrienneÂs Tourtiere

3½ lbs. fresh ground pork
2 medium onions, diced
2-3 cloves garlic
2 small potatoes
Salt, pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves
1 recipe two crust piecrust
1 egg, beaten

Put meat, onion and spices in pot, just cover with water and simmer 2½ hours. After 1½ hours add whole peeled potatoes. When cooked the meat should be dry and crumbled. You can either mash the potatoes into the meat or remove the potatoes. The potatoes absorb the fat. Roll piecrust into two crusts. Place one crust in 9" pie pan. Fill piecrust with meat mixture and top with second piecrust. Seal edges and brush with beaten egg. Bake at 350o for 1 hour. Serve with sweet gherkin pickles.

Cousin SuzanneÂs Canadian Meat Pie

1 lb. lean beef in ½" cubes
1 lb. lean pork in ½" cubes
½ lb. salt pork, minced
2 lb. potatoes, peeled in ½" cubes
1 large onion, diced
Pie crust for 9", two-crust pie
Boiling water

In a deep casserole dish (2 qt), place one piecrust and pat to fit with crust over lapping the sided slightly. Add ingredients to casserole. Cover with other piecrust, seal and cut a large hole in the middle. Pour boiling water in hole to top of ingredients. Bake in preheated 350o oven for 1½ hours; adding water as needed to prevent drying out. Reduce heat to 300o and bake 4½ hours, adding water as needed to prevent...

The reason that it was served after Midnight Mass was that Christmas Eve used to be a day of abstinence (no meat) in the Catholic church. We used to have clam chowder and clamcakes for Christmas Eve, then eat the tourtiere either after Midnight Mass or for breakfast. Always with ketchup (we were in New England). We eat it now for Christmas Eve dinner, but I make them ahead of time and freeze them. Bake frozen at 350 degrees for 45 minutes (no foil on top).

This is my grandma's recipe. My aunt used very finely diced potatoes and onions, but Grandma just used the meat.

Cook on low burner:
8 lbs. ground pork shoulder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. allspice
When done, add:
1 tsp. sage
Drain off grease

Cut down on shortening in pie crust. Bake at 425 until crust is nice and brown. Makes 5 pies. Because of the spices, this recipe doesn't cut down to a smaller amount very well.

ann your pie is gorgeous! i may make that for dinner tonight as a test run~

hope to see posting with is soon too!

I have made Ann's Tourtiere several times and it is really delicious. Use the full amount of allspice (although you may be tempted not to), it's a crucial ingredient. I love it hot and also cold for breakfast.