Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

Who says pot pies have to be made with chicken? We love to take all sorts of savory fillings and encase them in flaky pastry. Most commonly, the filling is leftovers from some sort of braised dish.

A few days ago, we had short ribs for dinner, using Daniel Boulud's recipe from the excellent Café Boulud Cookbook (we also love the version in The Balthazar Cookbook). After a fantastic meal, we still had some of the rich sauce and lovely meat left over. Time for pot pies!

They start with savory shortcrust pastry (we like a mixture of butter and lard for the fat). The bottom crust gets pricked with a fork and par-baked in a 450°F oven for about 10 minutes:

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

For the filling, we took the already super-flavorful sauce from our leftover short ribs and added in some finely-diced and sautéed onion, carrot, mushroom and celery (with the leaves - don't leave out the leaves). We separately cooked a potato until just tender, and cut it into chunky pieces about the same size as our leftover bits of rib meat.

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

Then it was on with the pastry top and back into the same 450°F oven for about 15 minutes - until the crust was a beautiful golden brown.

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

And finally time to dig in:

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

The contents are always way too hot eat at first, but fortunately you have the top layer of pastry already cooling nicely so that you can flake off bits and dip them in the gravy.

Perfect, decadent winter meal.

7 comments:

  1. This is heaven. This how beef pot pies should be made.

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  2. Peter,
    They look absolutely fabulous!!.
    We do a steamed suet pudding,but have got to give these a try!! :)

    YUMMY!!!!.

    Brian UK

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  3. I used to always resist any kind of "pot pie", but yours are making me rethink my whole approach!

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  4. I love pot pies and short ribs so this is right up my alley! I'll have to remember this the next time I have leftover short ribs. Thanks again for another wonderful idea!

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  5. The pie looks so rustic and beautiful! And I'm sure it was good eats too. :) I think I'm going to have to finally have my frozen Australian Four N Twenty pie that I've been saving for a special occasion, haha.

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  6. Thanks everybody - the best part is that we didn't get through all of the pot pie, so I still have leftover leftover short ribs to look forward to!

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  7. Oh, this looks fantastic. Meat in a meat crust, what's not to like?

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