← home

Tourtière, Bedard family

A family holiday classic.

Original Recipe

This original recipe from my grandfather’s family store, Midway Market (or just “Bedard’s”) in Plainfield, CT makes 15 (fifteen!) pies. There are no instructions.

Original ingredients

6 lbs ground hamburger
4 lbs pork
5 lbs potatoes
2 lbs crackers
1 lb onions
2 oz salt
4 tsp pepper
2 tsp cloves
3 tsp celery salt
4 tsp poultry seasoning
6 qts water

My Adapted Recipe - Version 3

This is my third attempt to adapt the recipe for a single homemade pie. To maintain reproducible conditions, I’m using store-bought crust while I experiment with the filling.

In the first version, I cut each ingredient 15x and tweaked the resulting amounts, which yielded about the right flavor. However I found that the fine dice of potatoes did not cook as thoroughly as I would like in the hour I cooked the pie; I needed a longer bake, or smaller pieces of potato, to get them where I wanted them. I also found that the bottom crust of the pie was disappointingly underbaked. As a result, I decided that in the second version, I would test out a dual solution to this: firstly, I blended the filling to eliminate longer-cooking potato chunks; second, I baked the pie at a lower temperature for a longer time.

In the first version I also greased the pie dish and refrigerated it before baking, to prevent the butter from melting off it. I found that the butter wasn’t necessary as a lubricant, so I cut this step out to avoid unnecessary heat-up delay in the earthenware dish.

In the second version, I blended all of the filling ingredients—which yielded an unnaturally uniform texture, completely losing the textural pleasure of the fine diced potatoes. I also made the mistake of adding whole peppercorns to the blender, assuming they would be blended; they were merely cracked, and the pie ended up underspiced, with salami-like studs of peppercorn.

For this version, I reduced the added water from 1.5 cups to 1 cup, very finely diced the potato and onion, and used saltines unstead of oyster crackers.

Adapted ingredients

Filling:

6 oz 90% lean ground hamburger
4 oz ground pork
5 oz potato
60 g ground saltine crackers
1 oz onion
3 g salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp ground clove
1/4 tsp celery salt
1/4 tsp poultry seasoning
1 cup water

Egg wash:

1 large egg
1 tbsp cold water

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Finely dice the potato and onion.
Run the crackers through a food processor or blender with the spices until powedered.
Stir the cracker mixture, potato, onion, and water in a bowl, then mix in the pork and beef by hand until incorporated.
If using store-bought dough, allow it to come to room temperature for up to 15min.
When the oven is preheated, line an earthenware baking dish with one of the doughs. Pour in the meat filling, and use the back of a spoon to smooth and level the top.
Cut a small circular vent hole in the center of the other pie crust, then place the crust on top of the meat filling. Form it carefully to the edges of the bottom crust, then roll the excess of both tightly down to where they meet. Use the tines of a small fork to crimp the crust edge down. Be sure not to leave thick sections of crust, as they will not cook all the way through.
For the egg wash, beat the large egg and water together with a fork until strands of egg protein can’t be lifted out of it with the fork anymore. Use a pastry brush to apply a very thin, even layer to the entire top crust.
Cover the pie with tin foil, then bake for 45 minutes covered.
Remove the tin foil and bake for an additional hour. The top should be golden brown,and juices should be bubbling out of the vent.