Pork Pies?

wreeder

RGS Railfan
I'm curious as to what is considered a proper pork pie. While in England I had a "Plowman's Lunch" in a pub in Trafalgar Square. It included a small meat pie with ham inside. But I also hear references to pork pie wrappers being hid by men in the car after visiting the petrol station. Can anyone help me understand?

Thank you in advance,

William
 
I have only 6 or 7 weeks in country, but a good pork pie is about the size of a large muffin with a glazed, flaky crust and is filled with roast pork chunks in a savoury gravy, semi-solid when cold, and may be eaten either hot or cold.

Remember Rumpole's ultimate curse: "May all your sandwiches come from British Rail!"

:B~D
 
Pork pies are best eaten cold, sliced about 3/4 inch thick and are great for summer salad lunches and late night snacking. Totally banned in my house along with anything else I consider tasty. :(
They are getting harder to find here unless you can find a delicatessen.
 
Flaky pastry with a generous filling of bulldust:p. Well, they're the only pork pies mum ever mentioned
cheers
Graeme
 
Ah, so they are smaller and not likely to have vegetables like a meat pie which we had at another pub.

William
 
I'm curious as to what is considered a proper pork pie. While in England I had a "Plowman's Lunch" in a pub in Trafalgar Square. It included a small meat pie with ham inside. But I also hear references to pork pie wrappers being hid by men in the car after visiting the petrol station. Can anyone help me understand?

Thank you in advance,

William

I'm assuming you mean the Melton Mowbray type pork pie? They come in individual and larger versions and are probably what you're hearing about when men leave the wrappers in their car. A Melton Mowbray pork pie, as the name suggests, is from Melton Mowbray and has protected status, as do many region specific foods, but there are loads of versions of this which can be made pretty much anywhere and would just be referred to as a pork pie. Quality is hugely variable.

There are a few variants on the basic pork pie too. I like gala pie which is a long rectangular pie with whole, hard boiled eggs in the meat (might sound odd but is delicious). As you mention you had the pie as part of a ploughman's lunch, I've actually seen a ploughman's pie which is a pork pie that has a layer of branston pickle and cheese in it. Again, sounds odd but is very tasty and means you can carry your entire lunch in one pie! :D

The larger 4 person pie (though I'd eat half myself)

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Individually wrapped pies which men in cars are so fond of. Although these ones are large, they type found in the garage chiller is just a smaller version of the same.

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A pork pie (as seen above) normally has a fairly solid meaty filling surrounded by a jelly to fill up the case. The pastry should be hot water crust, definitely not flaky. These pies are finger food and normally eaten cold as a snack or as part of a picnic lunch. This is generally what is meant when a pork pie is referred to. The stuff about people hiding the wrappers is partly because they aren't very good for you, generally being quite fatty, so you might want to hide the evidence that you have eaten one form your other half!

Meanwhile other pies have gravy and sometimes vegetables in them. The meat might be pork, chicken or beef (occasionally venison). This type of pie would be eaten hot with potatoes and veg on the side, usually with a knife and fork, as part of a main meal.

A ploughman's doesn't normally have pie. Traditionally it is simply a piece of chunky buttered bread with cheese (normally cheddar or stilton), perhaps accompanied by a chutney.
 
Wow, that is amazing and looks very good. I'm confused how these did not make it to the colonies. Pork is a big part of southern cooking especially this time of year. I can only guess the food police decided they were "unsafe" at some point in the past. When I was a kid in the 60s, everyone badly overcooked pork due to urban legends about pork having tiny worms. My mom's pork chops were drained of all juices by the time they were ready to eat.

I watch a good amount of British TV and grand dads are always getting yelled at when the wife or daughter finds the pork pie wrapper in the car or the rubbish bin. These look very much like the one I had at The Admiralty, Trafalgar Square. I finally remembered the name of the place. The girls wanted to try it while we were in London for the day. I enjoyed the food at the local pubs we stopped at more I think but it may be the pints of the local ale that helped with that opinion.

Thanks again to everyone for the information, as I've said before I'm exploring my heritage.

William
 
A pork pie (as seen above) normally has a fairly solid meaty filling surrounded by a jelly to fill up the case. The pastry should be hot water crust, definitely not flaky. These pies are finger food and normally eaten cold as a snack or as part of a picnic lunch. This is generally what is meant when a pork pie is referred to. The stuff about people hiding the wrappers is partly because they aren't very good for you, generally being quite fatty, so you might want to hide the evidence that you have eaten one form your other half!

Meanwhile other pies have gravy and sometimes vegetables in them. The meat might be pork, chicken or beef (occasionally venison). This type of pie would be eaten hot with potatoes and veg on the side, usually with a knife and fork, as part of a main meal.

A ploughman's doesn't normally have pie. Traditionally it is simply a piece of chunky buttered bread with cheese (normally cheddar or stilton), perhaps accompanied by a chutney.

We had the hot pies at a small pub in Malmesbury on the way back from Bath. They were fantastic. I had beef and onion and the better half had chicken and leeks I think with roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts on the side. They were on the daily special menu for about 7 pounds I believe.

The Ploughman's lunch did have the bread, butter a couple of slices of pork, stilton cheese and chutney. The pie was small maybe 2 1/2 inches across and 2 inches tall.
 
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I just keep thinking of the stale pork pie that Ted threw at Ernie the fastest milkman in the west and it caught him in the eye and Ernie bit the dust LOL.
Cheers Mick.
 
LOL Poor Ernie, I wasn't even allowed to watch The Benny Hill Show when i was a youngen way back when William. Hope you find the pork pie ya after anyway mate keep searching.
Cheers Mick.
 
LOL Poor Ernie, I wasn't even allowed to watch The Benny Hill Show when i was a youngen way back when William. Hope you find the pork pie ya after anyway mate keep searching.
Cheers Mick.


We had a good amount of "naughty" British shows on the TV when I was a teenager in the early 70s. Benny Hill, Monty Python and movies about a young man that always got into trouble with the ladies. I can't remember the name of that one. The fellow looked a bit like Jamie Oliver.

Confessions of a Window Cleaner was one of the series of movies I was thinking of.

The closest thing to a pork pie in America is the practice of putting pieces of roasted pork into corn meal muffins. About the same size and shape and they were good both hot and cold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHkoE6MZFq0

William
 
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We had a good amount of "naughty" British shows on the TV when I was a teenager in the early 70s. Benny Hill, Monty Python and movies about a young man that always got into trouble with the ladies. I can't remember the name of that one. The fellow looked a bit like Jamie Oliver.

Confessions of a Window Cleaner was one of the series of movies I was thinking of.

The closest thing to a pork pie in America is the practice of putting pieces of roasted pork into corn meal muffins. About the same size and shape and they were good both hot and cold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHkoE6MZFq0

William

Pork pies are big up in my area amongst the French and the Italian communities, and in some places they're available in the supermarkets in the ethnic foods sections of the frozen foods. We had one place that made those, calzones, and the most delicious spinach pies. They closed about 10 years ago when the owner retired.
 
We had a good amount of "naughty" British shows on the TV when I was a teenager in the early 70s. Benny Hill, Monty Python and movies about a young man that always got into trouble with the ladies. I can't remember the name of that one. The fellow looked a bit like Jamie Oliver.

Confessions of a Window Cleaner was one of the series of movies I was thinking of.

The closest thing to a pork pie in America is the practice of putting pieces of roasted pork into corn meal muffins. About the same size and shape and they were good both hot and cold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHkoE6MZFq0

William

When I was growing up in the '90s, we would often watch GPTV (Georgia Public Television, now Georgia Public Broadcasting, which owns PBS channels throughout Georgia) and they would have a block of '70s British comedy, particularly Are You Being Served? and my personal favorite Keeping Up Appearances. While my parents were driving, I would be in the backseat of our Ford Aerostar van, imitating Hyacinth saying "Mind the car, Richard," with a fake British accent.
 
I've just seen this thread. I sometimes make my own pork pie, using hot crust pastry - butter and lard melted in boiing water, then the flour stirred in to make a dough which must be kept hot. The pie "case" is raised by hand by the professionsls, but I have to line a tin which is sold as a pork pie tin. The case is filled with diced pork (about 1lb/450g) and topped with reserved pastry (which must still be hot), glazed with beaten egg and baked for about an hour and a quarter with more beaten egg brushed on about every fifteen minutes. Finally, when cool, the jelly is poured in through a hole in the top.

Ray
 
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