Amy's Ultimate Tourtiere

 
So this recipe is an Amy special. I grabbed some inspiration and ideas from Allrecipes.com but decided to just do what worked for me in the end. The result? Tourtiere that reminded me of home. Yum!

Ultimate Tourtiere

• 1 pound lean ground pork
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Large baking potato (pre-baked)
• 1/2 cup beef or chicken stock

• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
• 1/4 teaspoon ground sage
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 egg (for egg wash)
• 1 tbsp milk (for egg wash)
• 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie

Directions

1.    Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

2.    In a saucepan, saute onion and garlic. Once onion is translucent add pork, beef, stock, salt, thyme, sage, black pepper and cloves. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils; stirring occasionally. Peel the baked potato and cut into chunks, add into pan. Simmer the potato with the meat mashing up with a fork as you stir. Reduce heat to low and simmer until meat is cooked, about 10 minutes.  Since the filling is fully cooked at this point now is the time to taste and adjust seasoning to taste.

3.    Spoon the meat mixture into the pie crust. Place top crust on top of pie and pinch edges to seal. Cut slits in top crust so steam can escape. Beat egg with 1 tbsp water and brush over crust.

4.    Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, cover edges of pie with strips of aluminum foil and return to oven. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool 10 minutes before slicing.

A note about pie crust. For pies like this where the filling is already cooked you are really looking for that golden crust to go with your yummy filling. We discovered that the best method (for us) was to as we say reflect & protect. Watch your edges and when they get golden remove and protect with some foil strips. We tried it the other way around but with the egg wash covering the edges before the pie hit the oven ended the foil ended up sticking to the 
egg wash, bad.



I feel like the pie that we made with filling that we cooked and then cooled had better crust too. So if you can. Make the filling ahead and chill. 


Also, my normal MO would have been to brown the meat and then add the liquid etc after, but I have ot asy it worked well to have everything cook together. I realy like my onions cooked so I would still sautee them in the pan first before adding other ingredients.

There are lots of variations of this classic French Canadian recipe. Some use all pork or skip the potato altogether. We experimented this week and made one all pork and one mixed. We also tried adding extra spices such as cardamom but I personally found it a little overwhelming so I left it out of my ultimate recipe. The moral of the story is, experiment! If there is an herb you love, throw it in….taste and adjust as you see fit.