New Zealand Meat Pie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is a New Zealand pie? ›

They're talking about the humble meat pie, which has been part of New Zealand's cuisine since the early British settlers, with the year 1863 being the earliest mention. The inside scoop. The single-serve portion culinary delight is just the right size to hold in your hand and eat from a paper bag.

More care is paid to the cooking process, too. Bakers of the best pies braise their cuts of steak, make a chicken roux rather than white sauce for their chicken pies and ensure the vegetables are blanched properly. Since 1999, New Zealand's best pie has been a traditional mince and cheese or steak only a few times.

A pot pie, in US and Canadian dialects, is a type of meat pie with a top pie crust that is commonly used throughout the continent, consisting of flaky pastry.

New Zealand offers a range of iconic dishes such as pavlova, hāngī (a Māori earth-oven-cooked feast), and kumara (sweet potato). Popular treats include hokey pokey ice cream and Whittaker's chocolate.

I scoured the intenet for a more formal name, but in New Zealand apparently it's just 'meat pie'.

Historians have recorded that the roots of pie can loosely be traced back to the ancient Egyptians. The bakers to the pharaohs incorporated nuts, honey, and fruits in bread dough, a primitive form of pastry. Drawings of this can be found etched on the tomb walls of Ramses II, located in the Valley of the Kings.

This bakery is famous all over New Zealand and Patrick Lam is unofficially known around Aotearoa as the Pie King.

The city of Natchitoches in northern Louisiana (named after the Natchitoches Indian tribe, pronounced NAK-uh-tush) offers a regional delicacy popular since the late 1700's – the Natchitoches meat pie.

Sadly, they're not great as a regular part of your diet. An average individual meat pie provides around 450kcal, but the biggest problem is the 12g of saturated fat inside it – that's more than half the daily guideline. If you have buttery mashed potato or chips on the side, the fat content of your meal is even higher.

Generally, an Empanada is hand held fruit pie, like Hostess makes. Only warmed up. Meat pies, though made similar in Russia, only have meat and occasionally potatoes.

What is the best pie in New Zealand? ›

Patrick Lam, of Patrick's Pies, won the NZ Bakels Supreme Pie Award for his gourmet roast duck, onion and mushroom combination.

A 2020 Canstar survey found Kiwis' favourite pie flavour is traditional mince and cheese (at 22 percent) followed closely by steak and cheese (21 percent). Steak and mushroom and potato top ranked third equal at 9 percent each.

In Australia and New Zealand, a meat pie is a hand-sized pie containing diced or minced meat and gravy, sometimes with onion, mushrooms, or cheese and is often consumed as a takeaway food snack. This variant of the standard meat pie is considered iconic.

Lolly Cake, a popular New Zealand dessert, is a no-bake treat made from crushed malt biscuits, condensed milk, butter, and colourful fruit puffs called Eskimos. It's chilled in the fridge, then sliced and served as a sweet indulgence.

You wouldn't think that a meat pie could be so different across the ditch, but they are. Australians use short pastry on their pies, whereas NZ uses a more flaky pastry.

In the letter addressed both to consumers and employees, Tosi writes that “the old name was getting in the way” of the bakery's core mission “to spread joy and inspire celebration” — essentially making people feel unwelcome. “While change is never easy, we feel this is the right decision,” she writes.

“Our mission, after all, is to spread joy and inspire celebration. The name Crack Pie falls short of this mission,” Tosi wrote in a note to her team. She wrote that the old name was “getting in the way of letting the gooey, buttery slice bring happiness — my only goal in creating the thing in the first place.”