recipe: french canadian pork pie
Everyone knows those people who rants and raves about their Italian/German/Czechoslovakian/Whatever grandmother, her incredible cooking, and the totally amazing recipes that have been handed down for generations. Sadly, I have little to counter with. While the French French are celebrated the world over for their epicurean heritage, the French Canadian are not. Case and point: French Canadians eat frog legs, though on second thought, the French French eat snails, but they have the sense to do it with a lot more panache. My family hails (on both sides, originally) from farms outside of Three Rivers, that I cannot imagine were particularly profitable, seeing as my ancestors cascaded down to work long-ass hours for practically nothing in textile mills in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Our culinary traditions reflect this reality, and we eat pauper food.
I have two Memeres. The differences between the two are easy to list: Memere Dubois grew up on a Quebecois farm, the daughter of mill workers; Memere LeBlanc grew up in Maynard MA, the daughter of a butcher. Memere LeBlanc has replaced her complete Pfaltzgraff set three times; Memere Dubois uses her oven to store boxes of Little Debbie. While they both can, by memory, trace roots back to Quebec, you can see how perhaps maybe their perspective on food might vary. Ever so slightly.
Okay, a lot.
But they, and everyone else in my family for that matter, can agree that Pork Pie is excellent, must be served at Christmas, and is properly consumed only with ketchup.
While Memere Dubois is a lot closer to the heritage, Memere LeBlanc is clearly the cook, which made it difficult to determine what recipe to use. Memere Dubois always buys frozen pies from some little old lady in Pinardville, and these have potato in them, which makes sense seeing as it’s a nice cheap filler. But Memere LeBlanc’s preferred recipe, naturally, called for two pounds of unadulterated pork. I decided to go with this version because it is based on an actual family recipe (the potato-pie version was definitely NOT the one Memere LeBlanc knew from memory), and pork is only $2.99 a lb, so really, it is modern-day pauper food, and thereby even more appropriate.
This is the recipe as written, though by the time this was handed to me, I already had the same pie in the oven. Boggle your mind on THAT, (or don’t…Memere gave me the recipe over the phone).
That size is a mite too small to read, but if you had crazy vision, you could see that it calls for pork butts ground twice, which is frankly unsurprising from someone who grew up around lots of meat. The tool I’d procured to follow this exacting direction really didn’t work out, so I had to settle with regular old supermarket ground pork. And the trick, she was done. Along with an onion, that pork is pretty much the only significant ingredient.
Saute ‘em up.
End up with this.
Drain off the grease. Since I won’t be saving the fat for the War Production Board effort, the easiest method I’ve found is using a sieve—it is MUCH more convenient than spooning the stuff out one teaspoon at a time. I have this convenient sieve that sits in my sink.
Hhokay, so. Here we hev our meat now covered by ze water.
And then you simmer that business for an hour, mixing it up frequently to try to break up all the meat wads. If you change your mind and want to make goetta instead (which is German but somehow Memere Dubois grew up on the stuff), you can boil for an additional hour. No word on when you add the oatmeal, however.
Another strain and now we’re going to use your treasured stand mixer. This will accomplish three things:
- It will break up the meat into uniform little granules.
- It will mix up the spices and milk with the pork.
- It will cool the mix much more quickly than letting it sit out.
Finally, after like, an hour and a half, you’re ready to start assembling a pie! Go you! I’ve discovered that refrigerated pre-made pie crust comes out tasting just as good as homemade and also doesn’t make me want to shoot myself in the face, so I’m pretty much never making a pie crust by hand ever again. Just sayin is all.
For some reason, pork pies are always topped the same way: a crust with about a 1″ hole in the middle to allow venting. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off freehand, I found a trick for cutting the hole.
(you’ll notice I can’t even position a glass in the middle of the pie on my first try, which is exactly the reason why freehanding it was such a terrible idea)
Then I attempted to protect the edges of the crust with aluminum foil.
It got a little toastier than I would have liked anyway. But at least the edges weren’t burnt, those are the best part!
And of course, as any Charbonneau, Levesque or Savoie will shout at you, you have to at least try it with ketchup. Even if you don’t think you’ll like it, that’s the right way to eat it.
French Canadian Pork Pie
Coming to you straight from Memere LeBlanc’s memory
2 lbs pork butts, ground twice (plain old ground pork seems to work as well)
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2-3.5 c water
1/2 tsp sage powder
1/4 c milk
pinch nutmeg
pinch allspice
another 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
pie crust for a covered pie (refrigerated, frozen or your own—you decide!)
Brown pork and onions in a large skillet, breaking up meat as much as possible as it cooks. Drain grease, return to pan, and add just enough water to cover the top of the pork (this has varied for me from 2 c to 3.5 c). Simmer, uncovered, 1 hour, making sure to stir regularly (keep on breaking up the meat with your spatula). Do not let the meat dry out, though it does not need to be covered in water the whole time.
Preheat oven to 400o. Drain meat and onions again, toss into a bowl and beat with remaining ingredients (don’t forget the extra 1/2 tsp pepper!) until almost cooled. This will take the 5-10 minutes you’ll need to prepare your double pie crust, so if you happen to have a stand mixer, it’ll come in handy.
Bake for almost an hour, or until the top looks done. Let cool 5-10 minutes before serving with a side of ketchup.
The end!
nutrition summary: 180 calories, 11g fat, 0g fiber; ~7 weight watchers points
ENLIGHTENING FEEDBACK
mizike agrees with me, which is enough to be edited in, BUT he also gave me the name of this pie.
Nothing says christmas in Quebec like Tourtiere. Serve it with a side of poutine and a bowl of split pea soup for the maximum french-canadianness possible in one meal.
The Wiki on Tourtière is enlightening and dead-on, we just always called it pork pie. My family never did the poutine thing, but split pea soup is ALWAYS on the stove just after Mom and Dad have made a ham. I salute you, mizike, fellow Franco!
Also, I totally earned some cool points from Adam, and just wanted to point out that I am always accepting cool points. Not that I need them or anything. I may even give them to charity.
i love your pretty blog, but those meat pies have always been a turn off for me. But you know, luckily i’m not your sole reader and my opinion counts…not so much. But EVERYBODY knows that traditional Quebec food is POUTINE!! not meat PIE! please look into that
LOVE THESE PIES! My family has been making these for years and my Uncle Jon made a few this past Christmas. YUM.
I’m assuming that “Hhokay, so. Here we hev our meat now covered by ze water.” and “The end!” are references to my favorite ever flash video talking about the End of the World? If so, your blog just got about 500 extra cool points with me.
Oh, and Mmmmmmmm…. meat.
Nothing says christmas in Quebec like Tourtiere. Serve it with a side of poutine and a bowl of split pea soup for the maximum french-canadianness possible in one meal.
So every people has their version of the meat pie…in Mexico? (Or East LA…where I grew up) we do the tamale thing for the holidays, which is a meat pie of it’s own kind, really, also made traditionally with pork
.
This looks pretty damn tasty. I believe I’ll give it a go sometime soon. Two questions: 1) Does it keep/reheat well? 2) What other veggies might you add to the mix? Tomatoes? Carrots?
This looks excellent, and I love the step-by-step photo tutorial!
Cooking Light did a version of this in their latest issue in a feature on Quebecois cooking.
Tourtière
wow a pork pie! that’s something! I imagine myself being swamp with all that meat! hehehehe…
I bet it taste like a huge empanada. These are hand pies with flaky crust with pork or beef fillings quite good actually when it’s done right and not greasy.
I love tourtiere both with potato and without! My ancestors on both sides are Quebecois farmers who moved to Maine to work in the textile and footwear mills. I live in South Carolina now and we still make these (and pork stuffing, and creton) every holiday and if you have a recipe for split pea soup, I would love to see it.
“Three Rivers”? Tabernac! Don’t you mean Trois-Rivières? Or is it a different one?
I haven’t had tourtiere since visiting my Quebecois auntie for Christmas half a decade ago. Thanks for the recipe, I will definitely give this one a shot.
So glad you’re back
I have yet to try a storebought pastry crust…if you don’t mind me askin, what brand did you use for that?
This is going to be completely weird and has nothing to do with your recipe…call me crazy.. but… what would be your best kitchen counter made of? Because I’m remodelling the kitchen and there are so many materials (Corian, Silestone, Marble, Granite, Stainless Steel…etc!)…. Do you, as a pro, have any favourite one?
Thank you!!!
Crazy Me.-
Hot damn, this is tasty-looking grub. I felt the same way about pie crust after a couple of epic fails, but over the holidays I got stubborn and didn’t want to feel like pie dough beat me, so I made several pies to practice making it. I found the best way to keep the dough from getting overworked was swapping the water with vodka. And then giving myself a little sip as well. The alcohol burns off, you get a flakier crust, and the liquor doesn’t interact with the gluten of the flour the same way h2o does, so you still get a workable dough.
My family is French Canadian as well and meat pies are a huge part of our holiday celebrations. We also use a modified version of the filling as stuffing for our Thanksgiving Turkey. We call it “Memere’s stuffing.” My Dad actually had a meat pie shop in Cumberland back in the ’90s called Donald’s Meat Pies. The whole family use to help out during the busy holiday season.
Our recipe varies slightly. We use a mixture a beef & pork and we include the potatoes. I’m going to give your recipe a shot though!
Wow this looks all kinds of delicious. This is definitely in my dining future, though I’ll either have to half the recipe or look for more mouths to feed. Both are easily doable!
Thank you so much for posting this recipe. I’ve got Quebecois on my dads side and Acadian on my moms and they never agree on food. My Memere on my dad’s side makes the meat pie and will NOT part with the recipe. I can’t wait to try this
[...] French Canadian Pork Pie – Omnomicon – Pork? Yes Please. Pie? Hell yeah. Together, I am there. This pie looks amazing. It combines my favorite things, Pork and Pie. [...]
Nice blog, but pork pie is served just as traditionally with diced pickled beets, or bread and butter pickles. Not just ketchup. I have a tradition of making a petit buffet of condiments to serve with tourtiere or pork pie. I prefer to call the pie by it’s French-Canadian name because of the history of the pie in Quebec cuisine. My offerings as sides for tourtiere include green tomato relish, cranberry sauce, horseradish, diced pickled beets and a selection of pickles.
ohmygod! Someone who knows pork pie! And can spell memere!
But sheesh! My memere would whup my ass and call me “petite merde” if I ever considered eating pork pie topped with ketchup.
K… I copied your rainbow cake idea and then started poking around your blog. I am FAR from a cook (I actually don’t even like cooking), so I thought I’d get some snazzy ideas. Can I just say I near fell off my chair when you said Pinardville???? Sheeeee-it. I grew up in Southern NH and think French Canadian food (my husband is 50% FC and has a mom that cooks very FC), is the blandest food ever. So thanks for spicing it up. Apparently, it’s just my husband’s memere and mom who lost the art of flavor.
Oh, and with my last comment professing my love, and then finding this post, I just might start stalking you. LOL
My Memere was the type of memere who made Tourtiere with potatoes and ground beef in addition to the pork. She also used an entire half ounce of Allspice, which is about half of one of those small McCormick containers of spice, and store-bought pie crust as well. She’d send the filling through a meat grinder — but the food processor worked well enough in a pinch. Mon tadzy, I miss her.
Anyway, I made her tourtiere for my family this Christmas — my first Christmas without her. What I didn’t realize was that I was missing the creton as an appetizer, and cheese curds as dessert. I’ll know better for next year.
I came here to find your rainbow cake recipe my friends told me you made and I found cool vintage things.. aprons, earrings, mixers and the green mixer from kitchen aid.. I have the purple… I love the meat pie you made, I want to make that too. I will be back.. I love to cook but you seem to be more french inspired but I like what I saw.. My husband likes my cooking… we never go out to eat… BOOO hoo .. SO I am here to stalk you… Kidding but i like what I saw.
This looks really yummy! But I’m allergic to pork
*sadness*
I wonder if the same recipe work with beef, I don’t imagine it will be as sweet…
Just made this tonight…it was a BIG success =D
thank you, Omnomicon!
We’ve been making tourtieres around the holidays for 37 years. My memere used mashed potatoes in hers, but my mother used saltines (don’t ask me why) Also, we use half pork and half ground beef. My mother was always concerned about serving pork. This dish was primarilly served at the “Reveillon”
I grew up in Manville, RI. Only spoke French util about the age of 5.
Thanks everyone, for sharing.
I like your otherwise fun and aesthetically pleasing blog, but advising aspiring kitchen chemists to drain the fat down the sink?!? Blasphemy. You may mock saving the grease for the war effort, but you won’t mock having to remedy a viscous cooled-down pork-fat clog from your aging lead pipes! Fat gets disposed of in a jar under the sink, then gets chucked in the garbage. Or, pour it outside on the dog-run.
Mon Dieu! My Memere, bless her, was a FABULOUS FC cook. How about homemade baked beans, made from scratch bread, chicken stew with dumplings, the most tender roast beef or pork, boiled dinners with beef ribs and veggies, boudin, head cheese,fiddleheads, dandelion greens, beet greens,sardines bourdelaise, fricassees,buckwheat pancakes aka ployes, steamed puddings, french toast, cottage cakes and gazillions of pies, cakes, puddings, donuts, etc. Also, salt pork was routinely used to very successfully enhance the flavor of savory dishes. I could go on but hope this is enough to make you rethink your opinion of FC food & recipes. Methinks some research is in order. Also, there may be a generational thing involved here. My Memere would be your (Aleta) great, great grandmother. Final comment; her 4 daughters were also wonderful cooks so I cannot allow their talents in the kitchen to be marginalized. BTW, they never made tourtiere, guess they didn’t like it but cretons was well liked.
Add A Comment