"THE MUSA’S MAGNIFICENT MEAT-PIES " By: Brianna M.

 

Hello everyone so today I will be giving you my family’s recipe on a traditional food in my culture called meat-pie. My family originates from Cameroon located in West Africa and the infamous snack made there is meat-pie. What is meat-pie? It’s a small pie filled with meat and often other savory ingredients. Looks wise, it is very similar to an empanada in which both contain dough and meat filling. I want to share this recipe with you all because I feel it’s important to branch out and try new cultures’ food especially since we have a lot more time on our hands now. Another reason why I chose meat-pie to share with you all is because of how easy it is to personalize it to best suit you. For example instead of using beef, you can use chicken, fish, or veggies. You can personalize this as much or as little as you want it’s all up to you and your preferences. Making meat-pie has always and still is a great time for my family and I to bond and come together making our culture food. That is why meat-pie is very important to me as silly as it may sound because I am able to reconnect with my favorite people and exercise my kitchen skills. So now, let's get on with the recipe. First you will bring out all the tools, materials, seasonings and ingredients for both the dough and the meat that I have listed below. Now let’s first make the meat because it takes longer to prepare. The meat I use is ground beef and sometimes ground turkey, a pro-tip is to wash the meat before doing anything to it. It’s very important that you wash it thoroughly with water and afterwards using a skewer to help drain the excess water. Whilst doing this extra step, I highly recommend you use gloves during this process because meat consists of a lot of fat and it is very tedious getting it all off your bare hands (experienced that the hard way). After this place your meat in a saucepan and onto the stove for cooking. Now let’s move on to dicing the savory ingredients to mix with the meat. You’ll need to dice onions, potatoes, carrots and peas however I recommend you buy the pre-diced frozen carrots and peas from your local grocery store to save you some time. Then place your diced ingredients into the ground meat (which should be on the stove), for about 30 minutes to cook thoroughly. Once finished, drain the meat juice and then season the meat with the seasonings listed below, it is very important that you season your meat after you drain the juice. If you season it before then you will be draining out some seasoning as well. Once your meat is to your liking, now it’s time to make the dough. You’ll need a big mixing bowl and the ingredients listed below once the

dough is made, use the dough roller to flatten it out completely and a medium sized kitchen knife to slice the dough in 4 sections. In this step, you are now shaping the dough into your meat-pies and you can slice the dough as big or little as you want. Then you’re going to place a generous amount of meat or any filling you choose in the center of the sliced dough. Afterwards fold one side of the dough to another, and with your small fork press down on the ends of the meat-pie to ensure no filling will fall out when baking. Now repeat this step until you run out of dough or meat whichever comes first but for the most part it would be the dough. Whilst doing this your oven should be preheated at 350 degrees and ready to bake your meat pies, I normally place aluminum foil in my oven and then use PAM Canola Oil Spray to make sure the meat-pie does not stick to the foil while baking. Once you place your meat-pie in the oven, crack the egg, mix it and use the cooking brush to coat each meat pie with the mixed egg. Doing this step gives the meat-pie its golden brown color as it is baking in the oven. After closing the oven let your meat-pie bake for about 30-35 minutes or until golden brown. As the meat-pie is baking this is a great time to clean up, but pro-tip cleaning up as you are cooking saves a lot of time, but still make sure you are checking on the meat-pie every 7-10 minutes. Once the time is up take them out, try not to burn yourself and then ENJOY. Thank you for taking the time to read this, I truly hope this was beneficial and interesting enough for you all to make your own with your family/friends one day!!

 

PREP TIME: 30-35 minutes

 

COOKING TIME (for the meet): 25-30 minutes

 

BAKING TIME: 30-35 minutes

 

 

Ingredients for the Dough

 

●     5 cups of All-Purpose flour

 

●     3 cups of Crisco (better than butter) this gives more of a soft crunch

 

●     2 eggs

 

●     2 cups of water

 

●     1 tablespoon of sugar (if you like your dough more on the sweeter side)

 

●     1 teaspoon of salt

Ingredients for the Meat

 

●     Any ground meat (recommend beef or turkey)

 

●     Diced carrots

 

●     Diced onions

 

●     Diced potatoes

 

●     Peas

Seasonings for the Meat​​TIP: drain meat juice first then season your ground meat

 

●     Salt and pepper

 

●     Onion powder

 

●     Garlic powder

 

●     Lemon powder

 

●     Dried parsley

 

●     Chicken Flavor Bouillon

 

TOOLS

 

●     Medium size mixing bowl (electric bowl is highly recommended)

 

●     Dough roller

 

●     Extra flour (for your surface to roll the dough easier)

 

●     1 egg

 

●     Cooking brush

 

●     A small fork (to close the ends of the dough after shaped)

 

●     Aluminum Foil

 

●     PAM Oil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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