This is not a recipe for the faint hearted or the time poor. It produces epic beef pie. It can be done, I have put in a couple of short cuts and I break the steps and processes down for you.

This pie has a backstory. The Davinator seeded my YouTube feed with videos from Fallow – a top restaurant in London. I took the bait on Michelin Beef Pie. The pie is a lot of work but worth the effort. Its worth watching the video but I’ve put in some short cuts below to reduce the torment. You’ll appreciate my short cuts and understand your destination.

Original recipe – Michelin Beef Pie

Key simplications in my recipe; don’t brown the meat, make your caramelised onions in the slow cooker, use purchased pastry and only top the ‘pie’. Some people (including some close friends) insist that a pie that is not wholly encased in pastry is actually a casserole and not a pie. Maybe a pot pie. A proper raised pie in pastry is spectacular presentation. Making suet pastry and a raised pie is worthy of a day long cooking course and a lot of practice. Save that hill for another day if you’re not already comfortable with suet pastry and raised pies.

Here’s my recipe for slow cooker caramelised onions. If you cook them overnight, your kitchen smells divine in the morning. Caramelising also gets rid of most of the aromatics so that the onion sensitive in our family don’t have any adverse effects.

I’ve listed all the ingredients below, including the onions in case you decide to make by hand but excluding the pastry.

Recipe

Major cooking processes

• Make caramelised onions – slow cooker recipe here
• Cook the beef
• Make the gravy
• Make the pie filling vegetables
• Assemble and cook

INGREDIENTS

For the Braised Beef

• 1.5–2 kg beef short ribs (on the bone)
• 1–1.2 kg beef cheeks or beef flank
• Beef dripping or butter
• 2 onions, roughly chopped
• 3 carrots, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped (optional)
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• A few sprigs thyme
• A few sprigs rosemary
• Sea salt & black pepper
• ½ bottle red wine
• 2 pints Guinness (or other stout) ~
• 75 ml Worcestershire sauce
• Beef stock (enough to fully submerge meat)

For the Sauce Thickener (Beurre Manié)

• 50 g beef fat (skimmed from sauce or buy beef dripping, in a pinch, use butter)
• 50 g plain flour

Pie Filling Vegetables

• 3–4 carrots, cut into batons
• 250 g button mushrooms, halved
• Fresh thyme
• Butter
• Salt & pepper

Final assembly

• egg, beaten (for egg wash)
• Extra butter for greasing tin

Cook the beef

I do not brown meat that is going to be cooked in pie or stew. Chefs swear by it but I’ve never found it makes a measurable difference to the results. You will be slow cooking this beef for 6-8 hours and then putting it in gravy and then cooking it in a pie. Trust me on this one. Ingredients are above.

1. Preheat oven to 140C.
2. Heat several tablespoons of beef dripping in a deep heavy bottomed pan that is suitable for slow cooking in the oven. Le Creuset or the equivalent seems expensive and then one day you realise that your cookware might need a 21st birthday party.
3. Put the red wine and the guinness in a sauce pan and bring to a low boil, reduce in volume by about 50%.
4. Saute the rough chopped vegetables in the dripping to give them colour and release flavour.
5. Add the salt and tomato puree, turn the vegetables so they take up the tomato paste.
6. Slowly add the wine & guinness mixture plus the Worcestershire sauce to the vegetables.
7. Add the herbs; either in a bouquet garni bag or tie up fresh herbs with string.
8. Remove from heat, nestle beef short ribs plus flank or cheek in the mixture.
9. Top up with enough beef broth to cover.
10. Cartouche and cover with a lid. Trust me, this one time it’s worth doing the cartouche. Link to tutorial here.
11. Slow cook for 6 hours.
    Now for the fun part…..
12. Allow the beef to cool in the liquid for at least an hour. Remove the meat from the liquid and reserve the liquid. Strip the meat from the bones, discard any fat or connective tissue. Shred, but leave in large chunks for the pie.

Make the gravy

The reserved liquid is the basis for the gravy. There are two methods; a beurre manie or make a roux. I find the roux method more reliable and instructions are below for that. If you want do a beurre manie – link to tutorial here.

1. Strain the liquid and discard the vegetables.
2. Separate the fat from the liquid. Easiest way to do this is with a fat separator jug, see a picture below.
3. Weigh our 50 grams of liquid fat, prep an equal amount by weight of plain flour.
4. Put the fat in a pan, add the flour and cook over medium low heat, let it bubble for a few minutes to cook off the flour taste.
5. Gradually incorporate the reserved liquid to make the gravy. Stir constantly to reduce lumps.
6. When the gravy is smooth, move to a low heat and stir from time to time. You want it to be quite thick for the pie. You can make it ahead and chill it but otherwise it’s time to move on to the vegetables.
   

Make the pie filling vegetables

These vegetables will go in the pie and be eaten (contrasting with the earlier ones that you sacrificed to make the lovely gravy). It’s worth making them look good. The recipe calls for 250gs of mushrooms – if you like mushrooms you can add to that. Also, use butter to saute them – not the time to start worrying about saturated fat.

1. Fry mushrooms in butter over medium-high heat until golden. Remove from the pan.
2. Add butter as necessary and cook the carrots, lightly colour, keeping the vegetables firm.
3. Return mushrooms to the pan and salt, pepper and thyme. Don’t over cook – they are going in a pie.
4. Set aside.

Have a glass of wine and a little rest or push on to assembly.

Assemble, chill and cook

Find a casserole and grease it well. Needs to go from the refrigerator to the oven. Get together the beef, the gravy, the onions and the vegetables.

1. Break remaining beef into large chunks.
2. Layer:
   Caramelised onions
   Beef
   Mushrooms & carrots
   Gravy
3. Repeat, filling only ~75–80% to avoid blowout.
4. Cut the pastry to fit the casserole dish and apply. Trim the pastry, and crimp edges, fork-seal.
5. Chill pie for at least an hour – could be overnight – before baking.
6. Preheat over and bake at 160°C for 90 minutes. If top is overbrowned, cover with foil.
7. Remove from oven and rest 15–20 minutes before serving

Epic Pie became an immediate family favourite – I make big batches and do individual serving sizes in disposable metal containers with the cardboard and foil lids and put them in the freezer. It’s a treat and we like to drink a nice full bodied red wine with the pie.

Thanks for reading the blog and trying the recipes. Requests and suggestions are welcome.