Kokova Magazine

Beef steak and pepper pies, or parcels as we make them, are a great comfort food in our house. They are also super easy to go from freezer to oven in 40 minutes and we batch cook to save time. We still use the Pie Filling Recipe we added in 2012, and add potatoes or carrots depending on what is available. We even add peas to the mix, and make a selection of steak and vegetable pies.

When we have more time we make our pastry, but today I used ready-rolled Jut-Rol puff pastry sheets. Each sheet is cut into quarters to make four pies. Once the pie filling is made, we leave it to cool. Then we add some to the middle of each pastry parcel, fold them into small envelope parcels, and seal them with a drop of water or egg.

The pies go straight into the freezer and, once frozen, they are ready to cook when needed, going into an oven at around 180F for 35 - 40 minutes. The pastry can pop open as it puffs up but the pies rarely spill. To avoid spillage issues in the oven, we place them on a metal tray lined with greaseproof paper.

Our pies are lactose-free and we often use gluten-free pastry too. We made our pastry before or used the pie filling with a flaky pastry top - rather than making individual pies. Today the pastry was rolled in a slightly different shape so we made sausage-shaped pies. They proved easier to roll than our traditional envelope style. The choices are endless, and the results are great for us, and our homemade pies.