Tourtière: Quebec's Spiced Meat Pie

From a ground-meat pie to a Quebec winter

Put a knife into the baked pie and the thin crust cracks crisply, and steam rises from the pork and beef filling.

What reaches you first is not the smell of meat but the sweet, warm aroma of allspice.

Tourtière is a meat pie that has been eaten in Quebec, Canada.

It is tied especially to the Réveillon, the festive meal from Christmas into the new year, and is presented as a dish in which every family has its own spices and combination of meats.

But if you remember Quebec's tourtière as only one form, you miss what is interesting about the table there.

The type best known around Montreal and elsewhere packs ground pork or beef into a shallow pie.

By contrast, the "tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean" of the Lac-Saint-Jean region is known as a large, long-baked pie in which cubed meat and potatoes are layered in a deep dish.

What we bake here is the Montreal-style ground-meat type, which cooks through easily in a home oven.

The things people tend to be unsure about when shopping are allspice and the tools for making the crust. The changes to make if you lean toward the deep style are compared after the steps.

Ingredients (one 20 cm pie, serves 6)

The aroma of tourtière is decided less by the meat itself than by the outline that a small amount of spice draws.

Cinnamon and cloves alone would still make a meat pie, but adding allspice gives a round depth, as if you were tasting cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg at once.

This amount assumes a 20 cm dish in which the filling mounds in the middle and about 1 cm of the crust edge shows.

It uses meat, wheat, dairy and egg, so if you have a wheat, milk or egg allergy, check the ingredient labels.

Commercial broths may also contain milk ingredients, wheat or celery.

Three decisions that bring out the allspice and the crust

Add aroma without scorching it, rather than adding more

Even 1/2 tsp of allspice pushes forward the sweet aroma of the meat.

Added before the meat is browned, the moisture of the onion blurs the aroma; added in a large amount at the end, it stays powdery.

Letting it touch the oil for only 30 seconds right after the red in the meat disappears raises the aroma, and you can loosen it with broth before it scorches.

If you already have a spice blend containing cinnamon and cloves, use a small amount first and do not add more cloves.

The potato is there not to firm up the filling but to hold the juices

Grated potato absorbs the cooking liquid and binds the filling.

If you cool it with moisture left, the liquid collects at the bottom even after the filling has cooled, and the bottom of the pie gets soft.

Reduce until a spatula leaves a trace that lasts about 2 seconds, and if it is still loose, add 3 minutes at a time over low heat.

Conversely, if you reduce too far and it dries out, put back broth 1 tbsp at a time until the filling holds together when pressed.

A food processor is "not needed every time"

It is suited to cutting cold butter fine and bringing the dough together quickly.

But for one 20 cm pie, making it with your fingertips, without a pastry cutter or food processor, is perfectly sufficient.

If you bake pies and tarts several times a month, tend to melt butter with the heat of your hands, or make two at once, a machine with a 3.6 L bowl steadies the work.

On the other hand, if you don't want to give up storage space for a once-a-year tourtière, you can skip it.

In Quebec, the pie of the same name goes deep

The name tourtière doesn't point to the same thickness or filling everywhere.

Quebec culinary sources explain it as a dish using beef, pork, chicken, game and other meats, ground or cubed, with the mixture changing by region and family.

The type widely known around Montreal simmers ground meat and onion with spices and wraps it in top and bottom crusts.

By contrast, the Lac-Saint-Jean type layers cubed meat and potatoes in a deep dish and bakes it long with the crust over the filling.

This difference is not for arguing over which is right.

It is the result of the same dish name absorbing how meat was available locally, the number of people in a family, and the size of the baking dish.

If you want to lean toward the Lac-Saint-Jean style, use 200 g each of beef and pork, 150 g chicken thigh or venison, and 250 g potato.

Cut the meat into 5 mm to 1 cm cubes and increase the broth to 250 ml.

In a baking dish about 7 cm deep, lay a bottom crust and layer in the filling, cut a large steam hole in the top crust, and bake at 180°C for 90 to 120 minutes.

This is closer to remodeling it into a different dish, so for the first time, the ground-meat type here makes it easier to learn the benchmarks for aroma and moisture.

Side dishes and variations for a home kitchen

A freshly baked slice has the sweetness of the meat and the salt of the crust already together.

Add something sour, and the aftertaste of fat is shorter and the next bite doesn't feel heavy.

Start with one sour thing

Serve a small amount of tomato ketchup, whole-grain mustard or cucumber pickles.

Sides in Canadian home cooking differ from house to house, so you don't need to have them all.

A sweet-tart sauce made with apples or cranberries makes the aroma of cloves stand out.

If you change the meat, review the moisture first

When replacing pork with chicken thigh, use 250 g skinless ground chicken and reduce the broth to 120 ml.

Chicken breast alone is low in fat, so you may add 2 tsp olive oil.

If you make it with beef only, avoid very lean ground meat and check after simmering that it hasn't dried out.

When using lean game such as venison, don't swap in a local recipe as is; give priority to the safe preparation and cooking conditions shown by your meat supplier.

Leave leftover pie for the next day

Cool it completely, wrap it slice by slice in plastic wrap, and finish it within 2 days in the refrigerator.

To eat, rather than cold, warm it in a 180°C oven for 15 to 20 minutes until hot to the center.

With a microwave alone the crust goes soft, so you can also microwave for 40 to 60 seconds first and then finish in a toaster oven for 3 minutes.

To freeze, cool it completely after baking, wrap it by the slice, and aim for 2 weeks.

Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat at 180°C for 20 to 25 minutes, confirming 74°C or above at the center.

Reading tourtière's background at the size of a table

There are several explanations of tourtière's origin.

Some look for records of meat pies in 17th-century Quebec, while others say the dish's name changed from the name of a pie containing birds or a cooking vessel.

There is no source that fixes the origin to one thing. It is thought that French settlers' food culture, meat that keeps well in winter, and the wisdom of wrapping on-hand grains and root vegetables in dough split into forms by region.

At the Quebec table, it is not only important that the recipe is the same each time.

It is baking a big pie for Christmas and new-year gatherings and passing down the spice blend and the way of cutting the meat as a family memory.

That is why some households make the cinnamon strong and others bring thyme forward, and why a shallow ground-meat pie and a deep cubed-meat pie share the same dish name.

This 20 cm pan is not simply a scaled-down version of the big dishes made for crowds there.

It is a form translated into an amount a family can finish in one sitting, the time to cool the filling, and how heat moves in the oven.

Respecting a dish's homeland does not mean changing not a single ingredient; it also means working out what the center of the flavor is and not hiding the parts you changed.

This recipe keeps the two crusts, the savor of pork and beef and the warm aroma of allspice, and changes only the amounts and baking times for home.

FAQ

I have no allspice. Can I make it with cinnamon alone?

You can, but the aroma will be flatter.

You can approach it with 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg and a pinch of cloves, but cloves come on strong easily, so start with less.

What if I have no pie dish?

Use a round ovenproof dish 20 cm across and 4 to 5 cm deep.

With a metal pan the bottom bakes easily, while with glass or ceramic it may need about 5 more minutes, judged by color.

Changing the dish material changes how heat moves too, so give priority to the core temperature and the color of the crust.

The filling became watery.

If it's before packing it into the pie, return it to the pan and reduce over low heat 3 minutes at a time.

Bring it back to a state where a spatula leaves a trace and spooning up the filling doesn't send only liquid running.

If liquid came out after baking, next time don't squeeze the grated potato, and reduce the broth by 2 tbsp from the start.

Can I use all pork for the ground meat?

You can make it with 550 g ground pork.

The strong aroma of beef is reduced, so increasing the thyme to 2/3 tsp gives a milder, more cohesive result than increasing the black pepper to 3/4 tsp.

If you use fattier ground meat, skim off up to 1 tbsp of the fat that floats after simmering.

How long can the baked pie be stored?

Aim for within 2 days in the refrigerator or 2 weeks in the freezer.

Whatever the storage time, reheat thoroughly to the center before eating, and don't eat it if there is any off smell or appearance.

More North American dishes to make with it

Tourtière, which wraps meat and potatoes in dough, is a dish of the "cut a single dish into portions" type, even within North America.

When you want to build the table including sauce and sides, poutine, presented as a Canadian casual dish, also goes with it.

If you bake the pie first, you only have to prepare the sides just before eating.

Sources