Spiced Meat Phyllo Pie (Tourtière) Recipe | Cookin' Canuck (2024)

FAQs

What was the original meat in tourtière? ›

It gets its name from the tourte, which is what it was originally made from. Though the name "tourtière" is derived from its filling, the tourte—the French name for the passenger pigeon that is now extinct in North America—was historically used as its filling before the 20th century.

Meat pie is primarily made of ground meat (pork, beef or veal) and aromatics (onion, garlic, spices, etc.). In Saguenay–Lac‑Saint‑Jean and Charlevoix, however, “real” tourtière is a lot heartier than meat pie and contains other meats (such as game) and potatoes that have been simmered in stock.

As the breadcrumbs and the broth help add moisture to this recipe, added fat is an unwanted quantity that tends to make the tourtiere fall apart when cutting and also is just not very pleasant. Many of the same qualities that make a great meatloaf are also applied to this meat pie.

Bake phyllo pies and pastries at approximately 350 F / 175 C on the rack just below the middle of the oven. Defrost properly following package and/or recipe directions. While working, keep unused phyllo covered to prevent drying. Don't throw out damaged, torn, or unused phyllo!

Though the dish has been around since at least the 17th century, the first appearance of tourtière in a cookbook is in La cuisinière Canadienne which was written and published by Louis Perrault in Montreal in 1840 — it is accepted as the first French language cookbook published in Canada.

Traditionally, Tourtière is served with roasted vegetables or a light frisseé salad. An assortment of pickled foods is always delicious; pickled beets, spicy carrots, gherkins or pickled onions. Many enjoy a tomato-based chutney but most… just break out the ketchup.

tourtière, a double-crusted meat pie that is likely named for a shallow pie dish still used for cooking and serving tourtes (pies) in France. The ground or chopped filling usually includes pork and is sometimes mixed with other meats, including local game, such as rabbit, pheasant, or moose.

A pot pie, in US and Canadian dialects, is a type of meat pie with a top pie crust that is commonly used throughout the continent, consisting of flaky pastry.

Historical records of Quebec tourtière, which was likely named for the copper and tin pans the pies are baked in, date back to the 17th century. But hearty pies of the sort have been around for as long as humans have thought to combine pastry with meat.

Freshly Baked

If your Tourtiere is already baked, please store it in the fridge. For best results, the pie should be consumed within 4 days of purchase. To warm, place on a baking sheet in a preheated oven at 350°F.

How long to cook tourtière from frozen? ›

Conventional oven

Preheat oven to 190 °C (375 °F). Remove frozen pie from plastic wrapping and place in oven on middle rack. Heat for 60 minutes, or to your liking. For best results, let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

After shaping and crimping the pie dough into a tart pan or pie dish, you'll line it with parchment paper, aluminum foil, or coffee filters, and then weigh it down with pie weights, rice, or dry beans, and then pre-bake the crust on its own, before filling it.

Typically, phyllo dishes should have a finished thickness of 3 to 10 sheets per layer. (A one-pound box of phyllo contains about 20 sheets.) Tip: Phyllo pastries can often be very brittle when baked. We recommend using a serrated knife to cut the finished dish to prevent all of the filling from squishing out.

The acids in vinegar also help increase the flexibility of gluten so the dough stretches more easily. Traditionally, filo was made by hand, stretching the mixture into sheets with one's knuckles, rather than the fingertips that are more likely to cause tears.

To get that flaky effect, you need to brush some sort of fat between each layer of dough. Usually I use unsalted butter, which gives the finished product a beautiful golden color. For those who don't want to use dairy, you can substitute extra-virgin olive oil for the butter.

What's in tourtiere? The French-influenced pie is often made with pork, veal, beef, or game and sometimes a combination of the two. Mashed potatoes are folded in to help bind the meat, while celery and onion are other common aromatics. The spices give the pie character, such as allspice, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.

The reason mincemeat is called meat is because that's exactly what it used to be: most often mutton, but also beef, rabbit, pork or game. Mince pies were first served in the early middle ages, and the pies were quite sizeable, filled with a mixture of finely minced meat, chopped up fruit and a preserving liquid.

In Northern Europe, cooks made pastry with lard and butter to make a stiff dough that could hold an upright pie. These medieval pastry dishes were called "coffins/coffyns", that is, a basket or box, and were savory meat pies with the crusts or pastry being tall, straight-sided with sealed-on floors and lids.

With change of time comes change of taste. Even the consistency of the meat has been thoroughly debated. In past times, the cook would chop the meat with a knife, but now most recipes dictate the use of ground pork and beef so the texture of the tourtière is varied. Even the condiments have a new versus old element.