Australian Meat Pie
A shortcrust base and a puff lid over a thick, dark beef filling that has been cooked and then cooled before it goes anywhere near pastry. Sold at every service station in Australia and worth making properly once.
Photograph credit: Meat pie, gravy, and vegetables - Twickenham, UK by Daderot · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
A soggy base has one cause and one fix. Hot filling in raw pastry melts the butter in the crust before the oven can set it, so the fat leaks out and the flour absorbs gravy — hence the filling being cooled completely, and the base being blind-baked first. The filling is also thickened harder than a stew would be, with cornflour, because a loose gravy will find any gap. The two pastries are traditional and functional: shortcrust holds liquid, puff gives the lid its lift.
Quick Answers
How long does Australian Meat Pie take to make?
35 minutes of preparation and 1 hour 45 minutes to 1 hour 55 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of chilling, so allow 3 hours 20 minutes to 3 hours 30 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.
Australian Meat Pie: Step by Step
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Heat the oil in a heavy pan and brown the beef in two batches over high heat, 4 minutes a batch. Set aside.
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Cook the onion 8 minutes in the same pan, then the garlic for 1 minute, then the tomato purée for 2 minutes.
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Return the beef with the stock, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, Vegemite, salt and pepper.
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Simmer, part-covered, for 60 minutes, until the beef is tender and the liquid has reduced by about a third.
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Stir in the slaked cornflour and simmer 3 minutes until very thick — thicker than a stew, so it holds a firm channel behind the spoon.
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Spread the filling in a shallow dish and refrigerate at least 1 hour, until completely cold. This is not optional.
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While the filling chills, heat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Roll the shortcrust and line six 10 cm pie tins, pressing well into the corners. Prick the bases.
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Blind bake with paper and beans for 15 minutes, remove the beans and bake 5 minutes more, until dry and pale gold. Cool.
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Fill each case with the cold filling, level it, and top with a puff pastry lid, pressing the edges to seal and trimming the excess.
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Cut a small steam hole in each, brush with beaten egg, and bake 25 to 30 minutes until the lids are risen and deep golden. Serve with tomato sauce, which is compulsory.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Tips That Matter
- Cold filling into blind-baked pastry. Every soggy meat pie skipped one of those two.
- Thicken it further than feels right; it loosens in the oven.
- The Vegemite is doing savoury depth, not flavour. Marmite works and so does a teaspoon of miso.
Ingredient Swaps
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Serve It With
Tomato sauce, in quantity · Mushy peas · A cold beer
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Lemonade Scones.
Storage
Refrigerated for 3 days. Reheat 15 minutes at 190°C / 375°F. They freeze baked or unbaked for 3 months.
Australian Meat Pie Nutrition Facts
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: an ingredient listed without an amount is not counted, so the figures run low. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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