Favorite British Pies

British pies are quite unique to the tastes of the citizens and usually not that easy on the arteries.  For instance a favorite traditional pie is a pork pie which consists of pork and pork jelly in a lard crust. It is normally eaten cold with tea.

Pork and Kidney Pies are a mixture of pork, kidneys, mushrooms, onions and beef stock. The mixture is placed inside a pie crust and covered with more pastry until the crust is brown and the filling is delicious bubbling brown gravy.

The Cornish pastie or pasty as it is sometimes called originates in Cornwall in the South West of England. This is oven-cooked pastry that is filled with minced ground beef, onion and potatoes. It is notable because it is a half-moon shape that is created from folding a circle of pastry dough in half. The edges of the pasty are often crimped to form a seal.  If you go to Cornwall you can get the very old-fashioned type of pasty which was half savory and half sweet so you can have a meal inside one pie.

A quite bizarre pie is called the Stargazy Pie and is named for the herrings that are cooed whole in a pie with their heads postured so they are looking upwards. This is a quite an artistic endeavor.

The British also adore their fresh baked fruit pies which include blackberry, apple, rhubarb or a mixture of these fruits as one filling. These fillings tend to be sweet and almost like jam.

Every few years in the village of Denby Dale in Yorkshire the citizens make the world’s biggest meat and potato pie. This is a tradition that goes back to 1788 and the ritual was first invented to celebrate King George II’s recovery from mental illness. Since that time nine other incredibly huge pies have been created to celebrate a special event or to raise money for a charity.

The biggest concoction made so far was a humongous meat and potato pie that was made in the year 2000. It was forty feet long, eight feet wide and three feet deep and weighed twelve tones total. It contained three tones of beef, half a tone of potatoes and the gravy was made with 22 gallons of John Smith’s Best Bitter Ale. The pie was displayed in field on top of a specially built wagon and it was blessed by the local Bishop.