Cooking Louisiana  -  Meat Pies
Meat Pies are a quick cook appetizer and really not to hard to make yourself especially if you use pre-made dough. Yea, it's cheatin'...and? Hey, it's meat pies.

You can naturally make your meat pie stuffing out of just about any combination of meats and sausages or even seafood...mmm, a fried oyster meat pie. I'll work on that later, maybe.

This recipe produced 21 meat pies about the size of your fist with some stuffing left over. These are turnover type pies... not pot pies. Takes about three hours start to finish. You'll need a rolling pin and patients.

2 lbs. ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
2 med. onions chopped small
1 bell pepper chopped small
3 stalks celery chopped small
2-3 cups chopped green onions
1 heaping tbsp. minced garlic
1 tbs. Creole seasoning
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. cayenne
1 tbs. Worcestershire

--- Dough Stuff ---
4 pre-made 9" pie crusts
Egg wash (one egg beaten) in a cup (dough glue I call it)
Flour to dust prep-board.
Oil to deep fry the pies (I guess you could bake them).

Brown the meat breaking it up as small as you can as you cook it, then drain. Sauté the trinity until well wilted in a little oil. Throw in the garlic and green onions and cook for five minutes or so. Add the ground meats to the veggies and add all the other seasonings. Cook an additional five minutes stirring well, cut the fire off and let sit to cool.

On a large cutting board sprinkle flour and coat the rolling pin with flour. Make the egg wash and get yourself a fork to seal the pies. Get a dough cutter, a five inch rimmed bowl will work.

Before we go on, taste the stuffing to see if it needs anything.

On the dusted cutting board unroll the pie dough. Using the dusted rolling pin thin the dough out a little. Cut out as many pie rounds as you can and put the remaining dough on the side to re-use. One at a time take a pie round and roll it out just a little to make it a slight oval shape. Brush the edges facing up with egg wash. Add about two tablespoons of stuffing to the center. Carefully bring the top side of the oval over to the bottom side and gently press the edges together with your fingers. Brush the outside edge with egg wash and crimp with the fork to seal it. Practice will make you better at this. Be careful not to get the stuffing grease on the egg washed edges, they will never seal (stick to each other).

Fry (or bake) at 350ºF until golden brown. No, I can't give you a time on either method.

If you want to freeze them uncooked you can simply place them individually on trays and set them in the freezer until they stiffen. If you think they will be cooked within a month just put them in zipper bags, if longer I suggest vacuum packaging.