In New Zealand, eating a meat pie is a part of our culture. A meat is a savory meal with a filling (steak, steak and cheese, mince (ground beef), bacon and egg) encased in pastry and baked. Our humble meat pie has kept generations of people awake during late night sports games and early morning truck stops.

Today I am going to show you how to make a delicious meat pie. This pie will have a pastry base and sides while the top will be finished with whipped mashed potato and grated cheese. Why WOULDN'T you want to try one of these!

I would love to know what you think of this recipe...please leave me a comment.

Step 1: Ingredients

To make the pastry you will need:

225 grams flour
110 grams butter chilled and diced
Pinch of salt

For the filling:

use leftover food that can be mixed to a suitable consistency
2 mashed potatoes (for piping)
1/4 Cup grated cheese

Step 2: Rubbing Butter In

Add the salt to the flour and then sieve into another bowl. Add the butter and start to rub in with your finger tips. Keep going until the mixture is like bread crumbs. Add the water spreading it evenly over the surface or it will blister and look a bit weird when you roll the pastry out.

Step 3: Leave to Chill

Once you have added the water go in with your hands until it forms a ball. Wrap the pastry in cling film and put in the fridge for around 30 minutes or until it has firmed up. Putting the pastry in the fridge helps when rolling it out later.

Step 4: Rolling in the Deep (pastry)

Roll out the pastry until it is big enough to fit on your pie dish. Now the best way to find out if the pastry is big enough is to place your dish on top of the pastry and make sure there is some excess pastry around your dish.
Gently roll up about half of the pastry on the rolling pin then slowly unroll the pastry onto the dish (see image 3). Lifting the pastry around the edge push out the air bubbles and push the pastry into the grooves. Using a knife cut off any excess from around the edge.

Step 5: Filling

You can fill this pie with whatever you have on hand at the time but here I used some left-over Beef Stew and Rich Tomato Pizza Sauce mixed together. Spread out the filling into the pie crust until it is full.

If you are going to pipe the potato on top like I did then you will need to add milk to it so the potato can be squeezed out of the piping bag. I added a few tablespoons until the consistency was right.

Step 6: Piping

Fill your piping bag with the potato and pipe little rosettes all over the top. If you don't have a piping bag then you could just spread the potato all over the top. Once the top is completely covered with the potato, sprinkle the cheese over the potato and put in a 180 degrees(356 F) C oven for 30-40 minutes.

Step 7: Done!

Once the meat pie is cooked and golden brown, cut it into slices and serve. This is a very economical meal to make with homemade pastry and using left-over food to create the filling.

I hope you enjoy!