Monday, March 23, 2020

Beef and mushroom pie

In cleaning out the fridge last week, I came across a bag of mushrooms I'd bought a while earlier. These were supposed to get chopped up into salads, but the lettuce had gone south and was inedible. I didn't want to waste these mushrooms, however. They needed to get used up before they went bad.


Assessing what ingredients we had on hand, I decided to try my hand at beef-and-mushroom pie. My philosophy is "Everything tastes better in a pie crust." I modified an online recipe I found here.

First step: Defrost some bacon and beef (cube steaks, in this case).


I diced and fried up the bacon bits.


While those were cooking, I diced up the cube steaks and added flour.


I also gathered up various other ingredients: Beef broth, carrots, garlic.


Slicing mushrooms.


The recipe called for sautéing the mushrooms in olive oil, but why waste the bacon fat?


I also browned the meat in the bacon fat.

Adding flour and spices to the carrots.


Next, red wine. I loathe red wine with all my heart, but we had inherited this bottle and I kept it on hand for cooking. It's great for cooking.


Finally, I threw all the components together in a pot and just let them simmer for a couple of hours on the lowest possible heat.

When the simmering was done, I rolled out a pie crust and pulled everything together. This is the uncooked pie.


The baked result was utterly dee-lish.


Here's the recipe I used. Older Daughter doesn't care for onions, otherwise I would have added a couple. Feel free to modify for your own family's tastes:

• Six slices bacon
• 1 lb. mushrooms
• 2 lbs. steak (cube steak or other cuts)
• 2 cups diced carrots (and diced onions, if you wish)
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1 cup red wine (or Guinness beer, if you have some)
• Thyme and bay leaves (we have thyme in the garden, but no bay, so I just used thyme)

- Dice and fry the bacon and reserve the fat; put aside the bacon
- Slice and sauté the mushrooms in the bacon fat; put aside the mushrooms
- Cut up steaks and mix with 1/4 cup flour, salt and pepper to taste
- Add 1/4 cup flour to the veggies and sauté in bacon fat until veggies are soft (I skipped the sautéing since the carrots were canned and already soft)
- Brown the beef in the remaining bacon fat, along with thyme and garlic
- Combine all ingredients (bacon, veggies, mushrooms, beef broth, wine/beer, beef) and let simmer on low for a couple of hours.

Pie crust:

• 4 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups lard/shortening/whatever
• Enough cold water to make a dough

Roll out two-thirds of the dough to fit a 9x13 pan. Add filling. Roll out remaining dough to cover the pie, pinch edges.

Bake at 400F until crust is golden

Bon appétit!

9 comments:

  1. Sounds scrumptious!

    Natokadn

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  2. Sounds delicious. I make a real British steak and mushroom pie--the crust made with dried suet and steamed for an hour.

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  3. Sounds like some delicious comfort food. We are majoring in comfort foods these days - just trying to eat smaller portions.

    Last night was fried rice with chicken, tonight will be beef stroganoff. I'm also trying to up my dessert game so we have a little treat to look forward to in the evening.
    Thanks for the recipe!
    Cheri

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  4. Some parsnips or turnips in there would go good too. Both are often overlooked vegetables in America these days but they're a good "hard times" choice for gardens. They don't care much what kind of soil you have, though like carrots it should be well turned before planting just so you can pull them up with little digging when you want them. You don't have to wait for full maturity to eat them, and they'll self seed if you leave a few in the garden to bolt. Parsnips will "travel", with birds and beasts and wind spreading the seed, and you'll find parsnips growing way over there instead of over here where you planted them.

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  5. I made this per your instructions, using cube steaks and onions, with puff pastry on top, and it was delicious.

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  6. Just thought you should know this is now a family favorite. I've made it numerous times over the past couple of years with various ingredients (white wine, red wine, random beer) and today, dried mushrooms. Parsnips have also been used because they're delicious.

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  7. To keep mushrooms fresher longer always keep them in a paper bag. Plastic makes them sweat. We were members of the Spokane Mushroom Club for many years and if we had brought plastic bags on a foray they would have strung us up by the toes, poured honey over us & went and found a bear.

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