Tourtière Hand Pies
I’ve seriously embraced making comfort food this winter, learning to bake a decent loaf of sourdough bread, making pies and pastries, and ensuring an ongoing supply of chicken or beef broth for soups and stews of all kinds. While my inner gardener is always looking forward to spring, I try to be mindful of the pleasures of winter. Cranking up the oven for a few hours to bake bread warms up the kitchen, slowly simmering soup on the stove for a day fills your house with a wonderful smell and some much needed humidity, and spending some quiet time baking savoury pastries is the best therapy for getting through the cold season.
While I’m obviously super excited that it’s already March, it seems like there’s still a little bit more winter in our Canadian forecast before it takes a warmer turn, so the baking continues. Today I’m sharing a hand pie recipe, perfect for early spring gatherings, and inspired by the French-Canadian classic, tourtière.
Tourtière is traditionally made as a deep dish pie, with chopped meat (incl. game meats), potatoes, herbs, and spices. It’s rich and satisfying, often served during the winter holidays, but I decided to try to a lighter and more portable version, with the upcoming spring holidays in mind.
I used ground beef vs. chopped meat to simplify the process and make the filling a little bit leaner and lighter for spring. You can use your choice of ground meat, perhaps replacing the beef with a blend of pork and poultry or adding a little bit of ground lamb or venison to the beef if you want to add some more traditional gamey flavour. Potatoes are starchy and help bind the filling, and fresh chillies are always welcome for an extra kick. The hand pies can be made in advance, they keep well for a few days in the fridge and can be reheated in the oven. They’re pretty great with a side of blended vegetable soup, or on their own as an appetizer.
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Before we even saw this, my wife and I had come up with the idea of a kind of Canadian Empanada (which we would dub a “Cana-nada”) using the tourtiere filling in an empanada-shaped hand pie. After all, an Empanada is just that, a hand pie.
We’d found one recipe for the filling, but it used only allspice (plus S&P) for seasoning, and my wife tracked down your recipe, which adds the chilies for a bit of heat.
The same recipe we found called only for ground pork, but I think we will try either a pork-beef mixture, or maybe even a meatloaf mix that includes pork, beef and veal.
And since we like the lovely shape of an empanada – an arc with a decorative seal – we are going to use that as well. We will let you know how it all comes out.
Thank you, John! We look forward to your feedback after you try this recipe!