Saying Grace: Meat Pie

It's hard to know what to do with leftover roast. You can eat it in sandwiches or make a stew, but sometimes you need something different. My grandma's method was to make Meat Pie.

Meat Pie isn't strictly a pie. I'm not sure it's even loosely a pie, but it's a great way to use up leftover roast ingredients. It's essentially a soup on the bottom with biscuits or dumplings floating on the top. My grandma used to just make Bisquick biscuits, but my mom found a homemade dumpling that we use now. It's a simple, hearty dish stemming from the necessity of making a bit of leftover meat stretch into an entire meal. As a pastor's wife, my grandma's grocery budget was not large.

It's a great recipe because it's flexible, depending on what you have leftover from your pot roast. Bare bones, you only really need leftover meat and gravy to make this, but you can also add in leftover onions, carrots and potatoes.

The rich broth gets its flavor not only from gravy, but also smashed roasted onions and carrots that were from your pot roast. If you have them, they deeply enhance the flavor profile of the broth. Added to this is leftover roast chunks and bites of carrot and potato. The dumpling batter is dropped onto the top, where it cooks in the steam generated by your simmering "soup." A delicious way to turn boring leftovers into a satisfying meal.

Meat Pie

Serves 4 - 6

Total Time: 30 - 45 minutes

1 medium onion, minced

1/4 cup mashed leftover carrots

1/4 cup finely minced/mashed leftover onion

1/2 to 3/4 cup leftover gravy (or more if you have it!)

4 cups water

1 tsp. salt

1 to 1 1/2 cups cubed, leftover beef

1 1/2 cups cubed potatoes (fresh or leftover)

1 cup carrots, cut in small chunks (fresh or leftover)

Dumplings:

2 cups flour

1 T. baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup milk

3 T. butter, melted

This recipe uses leftover beef, gravy and vegetables from a previous meal's pot roast. It is very flexible, depending on what leftovers you have. The only things you really need are leftover beef and gravy. If you don't have leftover onions or carrots potatoes, you can make up the difference with fresh veggies.

Start by mincing a fresh onion. You will need this regardless of having leftover onion or not. Put it in a large Dutch Oven or stockpot.

If you have leftover onion, mince it super fine so it becomes basically a mushy paste. Ideally you want about 1/4 cup. This will add a lot of flavor to your broth. Add to the pot.

Then, if you have leftover cooked carrots, smash enough to equal about 1/4 cup. Just use the back of a chef's knife to mush them up. This is also a flavor booster.

If you only have a few leftover carrots, use them for this mash and then also add fresh chunks later.

Add carrot mash to the pot.

Then dump in your leftover gravy

(about 3/4 cup is great, but use what you have, whether less or more!) and 4 cups water.

So you should have: water, gravy, fresh mined onion, and onion and carrot mush, if possible.

Add 1 tsp salt.

Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

When broth comes to a boil, add cubed leftover beef.

And then add your veggies. Here are the three scenarios:

1. If you have leftover potatoes and carrots, add them both and then go straight to mixing up your dumplings and plopping them in.

2. If you have leftovers of one, but not the other, add the fresh veggies and cook for 5 minutes, until just starting to turn tender and then add the leftover veggie right before making the dumplings.

3. If you don't have any leftover veggies, then add both fresh carrots and fresh potatoes and cook for 5 minutes, until potatoes are just starting to turn translucent around the edges and veggies are just starting to get tender.

Hopefully that all makes sense? Basically, if you need to add fresh veggies, then you need to give them a little time to cook. But if you have already cooked, leftover veggies then they don't need any extra cooking time.