Beef Potpie is personally the best pot pie for me. Who doesn’t love a good beef stew? If you’re on this page, then clearly you’re looking to find a good recipe that has beef in it. You’ve opened the perfect page!
What is potpie? Potpie is basically a meat pie with gravy and pie crust on top. It allegedly originated in Ancient Greece and got passed on and on to different civilizations until it reached the United States of America and now it’s one of the most popular easy dishes to make at home!
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How to make beef potpie from leftover roast
There some kinds of food taste better the older it gets. Leftover roast beef certainly falls under that category. To make potpie from leftover roast, it’s important to know that saving any ounce of fat from the meat makes the flavor.
Preheat your oven to 325F. Heat up a tablespoon of butter in a skillet and gently sear the roast in hot butter. Remove the meat after fat gets rendered and set side for a while. Sauté your prepared vegetables in the butter. I usually throw in diced potatoes, carrots, frozen-thawed peas and a bit of celery into the skillet. I tend to add a little bit more of butter! Add a 2 tsp of flour to make a roux with the veggies and the butter. Pour in 1 cup of beef stock and let it thicken to your desired thickness. Add the seared leftover roast and let it simmer until all the ingredients marry together.
Pour the now roast beef mixture into small ramekins or a bigger ramekin and roll the pie crust over the top. Brush the crust with egg wash and bake for 15 minutes until the top is nice and golden brown. ET VOILA! Your leftover roast is now beef potpie! Delicious with that beefy tang!
Can I make beef potpie in a cast iron skillet?
Beef potpie is amazing because there’s very little that you need to make this delicious dish.
If you’re making this using leftovers, you can easily heat up the leftovers or finish off the dish in a cast iron skillet, let it cool and then roll the pie crust over it.
However, you must take note that it is important to cool down the cast iron skillet to ensure that the pie crust cooks properly in the oven.
I often use puff pastry as my pie crust. It is flaky and buttery so it’s a good finish to the delicious potpie.
Puff pastry is made out of cold butter, lightly incorporated with flour and water. These ingredients are lightly incorporated because the chunks of fat allow for the heat in the oven to create airy layers of flakes. If you roll over this delicate dough on a hot cast-iron skillet, the dough will simply melt and it won’t puff how the dough was designed to.
Now if you don’t have access to puff pastry, you can use any pie crust for this. Simple pie has the butter and flour more tightly incorporated with each other. You may use this, of course. However, the same tip applies, cool down the cast iron skillet before rolling over the pie crust on top.
Should I use frozen or fresh vegetables?
It’s good to use a mix of fresh and frozen vegetables for this dish. If you were making beef potpie from scratch, you would want to create the stew flavor from the ground up. Every base of stew starts with the trifecta of onion, carrot and celery. This not only adds complementing sweetness to the stew but it amplifies the flavor of the beef.
Use fresh potatoes, onion, carrots and celery. Add frozen, thawed green peas to the dish because it isn’t a potpie without the green peas. The peas add depth to the mouth feel and makes that bite of pie more colorful!
If you absolutely have no access to fresh vegetables, you may use frozen vegetables.
Can you make beef potpie ahead of time and freeze it?
We’re all about making life easier for us. The answer to this question is yes and YES! As I mentioned earlier, there are some things that taste better as it gets older. Beef potpie filling is one of those.
You can absolutely make a big batch of beef potpie filling, divide it into your containers and roll out the pie crust on top.
Important things to remember though:
- Make sure that the filling is completely cooled or better yet, chilled before rolling the pie crust on top.
- Make sure the potpie container is cool before rolling the pie crust.
- Tightly cover with cling film to avoid cross contamination and to not get the pie crust wet.
Beef Pie Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ lbs ground beef
- ½ lbs ground pork
- 1 medium potato peeled and cut into small cubes
- ½ cup onion chopped
- ½ tsp parsley
- ½ clove garlic chopped or grated
- ½ tsp mustard powder or mustard
- 1 tbsp tomato paste or ketchup
- ¼ cup water
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- ¼ tsp sage
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp ground black pepper
- 15 ounce pie crust
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees c).
- Cook the potato and let them boil for about 5 minutes or until tender. After that drain, mash and set aside.
- After that, add the pork and ground beef into a saucepan and crumble it, then add the chopped onion, garlic and water. Add the spices, tomato paste, black pepper, salt, mustard, parsley, sage and cloves. Cook over medium heat until the meat has a good browned color. Add in the mashed potato and quickly remove the pan from the heat.
- Cover a pot or pie plate with the pie crust then fill it with the meat, then cover it with more pie crust. Make a few holes with a knife so the pie can vent steam. Press a fork against the edges of the pie crust and remove any excess dough.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until it has a nice color. Enjoy or serve with a sauce!
