Any Lancs / East Lancs MN'ers? Looking for a "potato pie" recipe

[dayone]

Morning all. When I was growing up, standard grub at 21st birthdays, anniversary parties etc was a "potato pie" supper. A large vat of a potato and meat stew, a square of pasty popped on top and served with picked onions, red cabbage and beetroot.
Does anyone have a recipe for this type of Lancs potato pie? Scouse is similar I guess.
I've found one online from the Lancashire Evening Telegraph but I'd Iove to look at others for inspiration. Ta!

Butter pie doesn’t have meat - you’re describing hot pot with a crust (Lancs born and bred). Traditional hot pot is lamb but most hot pot suppers I’ve had are beef with a pastry lid, with red cabbage

Like this but you could use beef instead of lamb
https://www.bartonspickles.co.uk/recipes/traditional-hot-pot/

And butter pie was for catholics to eat on a Friday - onions and potatoes cooked in butter and baked in a pie

https://tunnelendpies.co.uk/product/catering-potato-and-meat-pie/
This is the sort of thing I'd call 'tater pie' (the 'meat and' is implied!) for a church function/large catered occasion. With red cabbage or beetroot.
Don't have a recipe though...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/meat_and_potato_pie_66778 This looks the right sort of thing

My mum used to make the best meat and potato pie. My siblings and I tried to copy it with various cuts of beef to no avail. We finally asked and she said “ I always used tinned stewed beef from M & S - much easier and cheaper…😂

No, butter pie is potato and butter and flour basically, no meat or veg.

I was going to type my recipe out but the recipe which @BlueberryBasket has posted is almost spot on. The only difference to mine is that I don’t put gravy granules in, as you don’t need any thickening when you use floury potatoes. I also sometimes swap the pastry out for a suet crust. And never carrots!

Some very unfamiliar suggestions here — mash topping? Hotpot? Even in Lancashire, topping potatoes with more potatoes would be a bit… potatoey.

M&PP I grew up with, cooked by my Lancashire granny, was potatoes, beef and I think probably onions, with salt and pepper and plenty of gravy, baked with a thick suet crust on top. And maybe another suet crust on the side for extra helpings. No carrots, no thyme, no ale. No bouquet garni or filo pastry either. Carrots served with, yeah, maybe. No carrots in.

Mancunian here. Tater pie, no specific recipe as it depends what I’ve got in but this week I did:

500g stewing steak browned tossed in seasoned plain flour with some dried thyme
2 onions diced sweated down
3 large floury potatoes 1 inch
2 large sliced carrot
500ml beef stock
more salt and pepper
pressure cook 40 mins on high
thicken (with 1:2 ratio cornflour to Bisto powder mixed with cold water into a paste) over medium heat for 15 mins while pre-made shortcrust pastry cooks in the oven (brushed with milk)

This made 6 portions. Serve with pickled cabbage or picked beetroot. Brother-in-law has picked onions (weirdo).
I use the pressure cooker because it makes the potatoes ‘plop’ - they are fluffy and hold their shape.

@PessimisticMissPiggy 👍👍👍

My gran used the lid part to this - the whole thing was enormous and I could've eaten it every day!

@ColinRobinsonsFart make yourself a vat of it. I often single portion it up into freezer bags (no pastry) so I can defrost one for tea on cold winter nights when it’s just me and I can’t be arsed cooking.

Perfect with a big crust of bread (after mashing the meat, carrots and potato down with my fork and then scooping up with the bread).

I don’t live in Manchester any more and the women in my family who used to make it never got to make it for my family. This dish to me is my childhood and love swept into one. Especially when I hear the pressure cooker hiss.

I call this pub party pie! I love it, amd am making it tomorrow actually, following my friends recipe. Here is what she sent me

The recipe I would like is for the meat and potato pie as made by Poole's of Wigan (and everywhere else in the NW), where it should correctly be called potato and meat because of the ratio of meat to spud, and is a smaller pie, perhaps 4" diameter.

Here in Melbourne the meat and potato pie is an abomination of meat in a pastry case, topped with mashed potato. Tastes OK but not the real deal.

In a large pan you fry an onion, and then add your meat (some use steak beef, some mince), herbs, salt and pepper. Then you add water to the pan and your diced potatoes and stock of choice and simmer until potato is softer but not too soft, and water has reduced.

Then you cover with a sheet of shortcrust pasty that you made while the simmering was going on, and stick in the oven until the pastry is cooked.

Never used a recipe or measurements though, I was taught by my mum.

Meat ‘n’ potato pie… OMG I want some now. Food of choice at every family party be a birthday, engagement, anniversary or 18th!

Booths sell it on their deli counter and we always buy 4 slices for dinner tea when back up north.

Don’t have a recipe so sorry no help!

Meat and potato pie recipe

Throw about 1 kg of small diced skirt or shin beef into a slow cooker. Add 2 large sliced onions, 2 large very small diced carrots, a couple of cloves of garlic, a beef stock cube, a squeeze of tomato purée and a glass of red wine plus a slug of Worcestershire sauce, a good grinding of salt and black pepper and finally a sprig of thyme. Barely cover with water and cook low for as long as it takes to make the meat very tender. At that point, add a few diced potatoes - the more mouths you have to feed, the more potatoes to add. If your slow cooker isnt big enough, put half of the meat and spuds is a pan and cook simultaneously on the hob.
Finally, when the spuds are soft, mix up a jug of Bisto powder with a bit of cold water, add to the concoction and boil up for a few minutes until thickened.

Pour the filling into an oven proof dish, top with shortcrust pastry, egg wash and cook in a hot oven until the pastry browns.

I’m so confused, is meat and potato pie not a thing anywhere else ???

Top tip: out a thick slice of buttered bread in the bottom of the bowl youre going to eat the pie from, spoon the pie onto the bread and eat. When youve eaten the pastry and filling youre left with a delicious slice of gravy soaked bread,

I think the lack of recipes is due to it being something everyone does differently and passed down generations with nothing written down. My version is -
Coat 2.5-3lb of stewing steak in plain flour and brown in batches in a frying pan. Transfer to casserole/stock pot.
Brown 2 large, chopped onions in the same frying pan and then add to stock pot.
Peel and chop approx 5lb of potatoes into bite size pieces and add to the pot.
Add boiling water to the pot until it’s about an inch below the top of the potatoes.
Add 2-3 stock cubes and some salt and pepper.
Mix well, put on lid and put in oven at approx 160 deg C for 2.5-3 hours - stirring occasionally until the potatoes have fallen and it’s thickened up (if too much liquid remove the lid and turn the oven up for 20 mins or so).
When ready, take pot out of oven and turn oven up to 200 deg C. Roll out shortcrust pastry and cut out circle using the stock pot lid as a guide. Place this directly on top of pie mix, wash pastry with a little milk or egg, cut a couple of steam holes in the pastry and return to the oven for 20-30 mins until pastry is golden brown and not soggy to the touch.

It is but not usually at events

So for peoples birthday, wedding anniversary etc you would get the meat and potato pie tray, the red cabbage/beetroot, buttered bread and cheese and onion or butter pie for the veggies!
Always in a giant tray and with pastry lid only on the meat and potato one

Swiped photos off Google

I know what you mean, @dayone My dear mum made meat and potato pie and it was a staple of my childhood. She would have fried some onions (slowly), added chunks of beef and browned them, then added some stock or even just water and seasoning and let it cook till tender. No garlic, herbs or anything fancy. No other veg.

Then she’d boil potatoes separately. When they were cooked, drain and cut into chunks. Line your dish with pastry if you want, or otherwise just make enough shortcrust pastry for the top. Mix the cooled meat and onions and the potatoes in your dish - make sure there’s plenty of gravy. You can thicken it with a bit of cornflour if you like. Top with pastry. Cook in a hot oven till brown and appetising. Serve with veg of your choice and yes, red cabbage.

My mouth's watering now…

Here's a slightly more evolved recipe I found online.

I know this potato pie of which you speak, OP. My grandma made one every Thursday throughout her married life. The 'hat' or pie crust was optional and put on at the end. The recipe was in her head but could use beef mince or stewing steak, onions, potatoes, an Oxo cube, salt and some water. Cooked in an earthenware pot , in the oven, on a medium heat for around two to three hours. The potatoes needed to be Edwards (King Edwards) to fall and make the texture right. My grandma's potato pie was thick, gooey, and delicious. My mother's potato pie, made with similar ingredients was watery and unpleasant. To be fair to my mum though, her roasts and duck a l'orange were amazing. My grandma also made stew, in a pan on the hob, with meat, potatoes, onions, oxo, a tin of butter beans, peas perhaps, salt and water. No-one known to me made 'Lancashire Hot Pot'.

Lancastrian here and Potato Pie to me is:

Diced Beef cooked with sliced potatoes in the oven and then when potatoes almost cooked the casserole is covered with Suet Crust Pastry made with Atora. If it does not have Suet Crust Pastry on the top then it is not Potato Pie!

It is my husband's favourite dish but so difficult to find Atora here (NZ) and it does contain around 5,000 calories a portion, but it is good.