In honour of St. Paddy’s Day, I invited my friends over for a pot luck dinner. The theme for the dinner was green or Irish and we had a pesto green starter and several green desserts. I made individual steak and Guinness Pies and we also had a green hued potato and pea mash.
I confess. I’m not a huge fan of Guinness. I can drink it, but I find it heavy and savoury and pint or bottle is usually enough for me. I do however, enjoy it in a pie.
You will need a lidded pot for this recipe (I used a dutch oven) and a 6up muffin tin. This is not the time for a dainty cupcake tin. My muffin tin makes large muffins about 3 inches or 8 cm wide at the base. To measure out how wide I needed the pie cases, I first measured across the wall+base+wall of a muffin tin with the edge of a teatowel and matched this measurement across the mouth a bowl. This bowl became the “cookie cutter” for the pie case. To find a “cookie cutter” for the pie tops, measure a large cup over the mouth of the muffin tin. The cup needs to be a smidgen larger than the muffin top.
Individual Steak and Guinness Pies
Makes 6 pies
Ingredients
3 sheets frozen puff pastry
1 egg for glazing
Filling Ingredients
500 grams (1 pound) rump steak
2 tablespoons butter
2 onions
2 potatoes
4 button mushrooms
3 cloves garlic
330ml (1 large can) Guinness beer (stout)
3 tablespoons flour
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary
Pinch of salt
Black pepper
Preparation
- Melt the butter in a heavy pot.
- Finely dice the onions, peel and dice the potatoes and cook for several minutes over a medium-low heat.
- Dice the steak and remove any fat or gristle. Add to the pot. Chop the rosemary and add to the pot.
- Slice mushrooms and garlic cloves and add to the pot. Turn up the heat and cook until beef is browned.
- Add most of the beer, saving a mouthful or so for your own speculation. The beer will foam up as you pour. Stir in the flour, salt and black pepper. Turn down the heat and cover with lid.
- Simmer on lowest heat for 1 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
- Remove the lid and turn up the heat. Stir carefully making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan and reduce the sauce until clings thickly to the meat. Make sure you do not burn the mixture. Taste the gravy and season if required. Turn off heat and get baking.
- Half an hour before baking time, preheat your oven to 200°C/390°F.
- Thaw 3 sheets of puff pastry. Measure your muffin tin and using a bowl (pie case) and a cup (pie top), cut out 6 pie cases and 6 pie tops to neatly fit your tin. Spray the muffin tin with cooking spray. I found that each sheet could fit 2 larger circles in diagonal corners, and 2 smaller circles in the other 2 diagonal corners. Make small pleats around the edge of each of the larger circles and fit the pastry neatly into each muffin cup.
- Divide the mixture into 6 portions and fill the cases with the meat filling. The pies should be filled level to the walls of the tin.
- Top each pie with the smaller circles of pastry. Cut 2 small slits into the top each pie to allow steam to escape. Using a pastry brush, brush the top of each pie with beaten egg.
- Bake pies at 200°C/390°F for 30 minutes until puffed up and golden. Serve with peas and potato mash (or both for a festive green mash) or reheat as required.
Other posts you may find interesting:
Rhubarb hand pies
Lemon sugar elephant ears
Strawberry heart puffs
Individual steak and Guinness pies
Farmhouse pasties
Make an edible gift
Bunny Eats Design 
I adore Guinness, but like you, one goes a long way for me too! These little pot pies look gorgeous. I have a friend who makes a similar recipe but she let’s it sit in the fridge overnight, she says it tastes better that way!
Overnight would be good I’m sure. I find it really tough having that kind of patience and foresight though!
Oh fantastic! I am drooling! This looks absolutely amazing. It sounds like you had some really spoiled guests!
Sadly, I only have a dainty muffin tin. I gotta get me one of those large muffin ones! I love the look of yours. It looks like it has been a good friend!
lol. It certainly has. Lucky for cooking spray or I would have thrown it into the garden by now.
These look like they would go great with an awesome chocolate Guinness cupcake recipe I have. I’m going to have to definitely try these!
These look delicious!
Thanks Cass! Maybe you could make a mushroomy one for a non-meat version?
Nothing better than the burnished exterior of puff pastry; these are beautiful in their rusticity (I’m also jealous of the patina on your muffin tin). I made a recipe very similar to this not long ago from an old NYTimes article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/magazine/22food-t-001.html) and it was fantastic, so I imagine yours was as well. I don’t generally eat red meat or drink Guinness but the combination of the two after stewing together was heart-warmingly savory in a way that few foods are.
Hi Nicole, the recipes are quite similar, only I’m a little afraid of making pastry from scratch. How did yours go? I just finished reading Toast by Nigel Slater and one of my favourite quotes from it is: “Eating a slice of pie is like being in love”.
I didn’t actually follow that pastry recipe, I just used my tried and true pie crust recipe. Honestly, I totally get why a lot of people are a bit wary of making pastry, but once you’ve done it once or twice I think you’ll realize that it’s a lot simpler than you think. You just get the feel for it, and really any homemade pie crust is going to be better than storebought (though I do like the storebought puff pastry!) I’ll probably post about it soon, but in the meantime this smitten kitchen post is pretty great http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/pie-crust-102-all-butter-really-flaky-pie-dough/ . I more or less use that recipe and the tips therein, particularly I like going the low-tech route and just using a hand-held pastry blender, and not cutting the fat in too much. I also find that using a scale is very helpful here (though I’ve made this crust successfully many times without) as it kind of takes out the guesswork from measurement, though I’m a bit scale proselytizer in general when it comes to baking, so take my word at that.
Thanks for sharing that link Nicole. I read that and the next post on rolling dough. I don’t space for a food processor but I could easily pick up a pastry blender. I do love the idea of not working the butter in too much. Who knew that less work is better?
Definitely. I don’t have (and actually never have had) a food processor, and find that I usually get away just fine with my immersion blender for most tasks. Honestly, while it might be SLIGHTLY quicker to bust out a food processor when making pastry dough, it’s not much work to use a pastry blender (and they’re also great for making biscuits/scones/crumble topping) so it’s not an annoying kitchen unitasker. As long as you don’t work it too much (my crust always has streaks of butter when it’s rolled out) it turns out a consistently great crust. It will be pretty shaggy before it has rested in the fridge, so don’t fret, I just form it into as cohesive of a disk as I can, and wrap it in plastic wrap, and the hour or two rest in the fridge does the rest of the work (I also usually make up a double batch and freeze some for later, so that you can make a pie with a little less effort down the road).
Thanks for the tips! It’s comforting to know that you don’t use a food processor either. I was given one years ago, but it collected dust in the cupboard so I gave it away. I love my immersion blender too. I don’t use my regular blender anymore.