I mentioned the tourtière we eat at Christmas. Kathy makes it with store-bought pie crusts, which works well.Tourtière uses various ground meats. Over the years, we had ground beef, pork, turkey, and people who hunt would use ground wild meat. Depending on the year, Kathy will add gravy to the ground meat to bake in the pie. It depends on what we have in the fridge and you could use broth. If a person uses lean meat, it moistens it. This year we will add gravy from our Thanksgiving turkey over the pie after it is made. The other unique feature to tourtière is it is often made with mashed potatoes mixed in with the meat, usually with various vegetables that have been simmered in a broth. We eat a lot of sweet potatoes so that is another alternative to mix in.
The original tourtière was made with ground veal, which is quite expensive. When my mémère (grandmother) and pépère (grandfather) moved to Alberta to homestead 100+ years ago, they modified the recipe to use what was available and least expensive. The latter included shipping meat that got a higher price. They would have used wild meat when they could.
½ lb ground lean beef
½ lb ground pork
- 1 lb meat total per pie
1/3 c chopped onion
¼ c water
1 tsp salt or to taste
¼ tsp pepper or to taste
1/3 c chopped celery
2 pie crusts – make your own or purchase ready-made
Brown meat and vegetables, add salt, pepper, additional spices if desired.
Cool mixture as you don’t want to melt the fats in the pie crust.
Pour meat mixture into pie crust, cover with 2nd pie crust, seal edges, make slits for steam to escape.
Bake in hot oven (425F) 20-25 minutes until browned.
Baked tourtière can be frozen and reheated before serving.
Alternate ingredients: other cooked vegetables such as chopped carrots, green peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes. Some like to add gravy so pie is more moist.
I want to leave you with the following message from Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s Advent Sermon “The Coming of Jesus into our Midst.” It reminds me of the Christmas message.
…we are faced with the shocking reality:
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality.
He asks you for help in the form of a beggar,
in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing.
He confronts you in every person that you meet.
Christ walks on the earth as your neighbour as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom
God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands.
That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?
For those who have followed my blog for a while, you might be aware I am big John Prine fan. We saw him in concert and I have many of his songs on my I-Pod. Yes, I still use an I-Pod. This is his song Christmas in Prison.
🥮
Thank you.
You are welcome
⭐☃️༶・・ᗰદ૨૨ʏ ᘓમ૨ıડτന੨ડ・・༶☃️⭐
Thank you Cindy and Merry Christmas to you and yours
Thank you for sharing recipe, the way you/yours make it which is so great! Cuz, um, I too, learned from those before me AND my own life, “make do with what is around one” instead of picture perfect, exact amounts/what is called for, in the recipe –
Love the additional shares within this post – so I shall share one of my fave’s from this time of year, from my inherited musical fronts and memories:
Johnny Cash – The Christmas Guest – as a “Thank You!” and “Hear Ya” and no matter how far apart, me and thee, have much in common…overall…
We do learn from those who came before. Thank you for the lovely Johnny Cash song.
P.S. Reminding myself the “Christmas Spirit” surrounds me every day of the year, even when, I fail to fully see it, as I just expect it to show up, in a certain way on some specific day – Signed LOL (laughing at my forgetfullness)
Yes, it does.
A good pie and Jesus should not be forgotten 💖
He should not be. We had some of the tourtiere for supper. It was excellent.
Sounds interesting but I have never had a meat pie. Enjoy the holidays with your family, then keep the spirit all year long.
Christmas is an everyday event or should be. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Sounds delish.
It is and Kathy rarely ever makes it the same year to year. She experiments and it usually comes out excellent.
Happy New Year!