Revisiting an Old Deep Dish

While planning out our meals for last week, I had the idea to make something I haven't had since college: meat pie. And so, I went about planning what I wanted to put into the pie. Well, the first thought that came to mind was to make it a bacon cheeseburger meat pie. Because everything is better with bacon! Just for the record, my meat pie is just that, a meat pie. No vegetables like a pot pie, no potato covering like shepherds pie, and made with ground meat unlike a berry/nut mixture in mincemeat pie. So, over the weekend, I was able to do a little cooking and make my meat pie.

Saturday afternoon, I began by browning the elk burger with chopped onions, mixing in an assortment of spices: salt, pepper, garlic, cumin, red pepper flakes, and paprika. Next I added the turkey bacon we cooked up the night before when we made homemade pizza (my pizza will be a blog entry another day). While I don't mind turkey bacon, it is definitely not the wonder food that cured pork belly is. So, chalk up turkey bacon as mistake number one. I finished cooking up the filling, and let it cool a bit. When I was ready to fill the pie, I added some eggs to act as a binding agent.

After cooking up the filling, I made the crust. My standard pie crust (yet another blog entry) works great in this application, and this time was no exception. Even got to make a few pieces of 'crust', or 'makins' (I think) as my mother calls them. Essentially the leftover crust dough rolled out, cut up, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and baked. Yum! I used to make batches of this in college as my main meal. It was cheap and delicious! Not very healthy though.

So, I rolled out my bottom crust, put it in the pie plate, and started filling it. And filled it some more. Then filled it some more. This was mistake number two. Too much meat filling. The end result was an overly deep pie. After filling the pie, I contemplated the cheese actually going into the concoction. Ultimately, I did not put cheese in. Mistake number three. I think a bit of cheddar would have been really good. But as I was making the pie, for some reason I had a hard time reconciling the taste of dairy with my crust. Oh well, live and learn. On went the top crust, and into the oven!

So, the pie came out, and the boys were quite excited to see what their Dad came up with this time. Especially since they were having 'dessert' for supper! They all love my apple pie, so I suppose they all figured this pie should be great too! Well, the result was definitely edible, but not my best creation.

For starters, the overly thick pie was very filling. None of the boys were able to finish a whole piece. And it was pretty dry too. Guess that happens when you use a lean protein like elk meat. So, I may have to look into making a sauce to go in the pie, maybe a thick brown gravy. But, the boys did say they liked it, so it may be something to keep working on and make again!