HuntFishMB Recipes
A long winter leaves for a tremendous amount of time to experiment with exciting new ways to utilize your wild game meat in the freezer. This HuntFishMB Recipes segment is all about that. For this Recipe, Josh McFaddin creates incredibly tasty “Wild Game Cheeseburger Meat Pies”.
This recipe is super easy to put together but will woo your friends and family during your next dinner get-together. This recipe also serves as a fantastic snack to bring into the hunting blind, ice shack, or on the groomed trails this winter. Just wrap them in tinfoil and warm them up wherever you are at!
Please check out the full recipe video below, as well as the complete written recipe following.
What you need:
Cheese Sauce:
- ¼ Cup butter
- ¼ Cup flour
- ¾ Cup cheddar cheese
- ¼ Cup cream (a higher fat milk works great too)
- 1 to 1-½ cups of beer
Meat Pie:
- ¾ Cup diced bacon
- ½ Onion, fine chopped
- ¼ Cup Celery, fine chopped
- ½ Cup Mushrooms, fine chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 1 Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (or use 1 teaspoon dry)
- 1 pound ground wild meat
- ¼ Cup strong beer
- 1 Tablespoon of butter
- 2 Tablespoons of flour
- 1 Cup shredded cheddar
- Salt + Pepper to taste
- Premade Puff Pastry
How to Make It:
Cheese Sauce:
- First, you will start by making what is called a roux (pronounced: Rew). This may sound fancy, but it’s a really simple trick to learn that will help thicken the cheese sauce and serves as a thickener for many things you already love, like gravy.
- For the roux, melt the butter in a saucepan on medium heat. Then add the flour and whisk to incorporate. Cook for a minute or two, whisking constantly so that nothing burns.
- Add the cream and stir, then add the shredded cheese and stir until melted and mixed well.
- Things should be looking quite thick at this point, so you will now add the beer in order to loosen things up. Once the beer is added, keep stirring over the heat. As the beer warms up, the sauce will start to thicken once again. You are looking for a consistency that will easily coat a spoon, so if things are too thick, just add a shot or two of more beer and stir if the sauce is looking too thick.
- Once you hit the right consistency, remove the pan from the heat, cover with a lid and set aside.
Meat Pies:
- Heat a pan on medium-high heat and start to saute the bacon. Once it is crispy, add the onion and celery, cook until soft.
- Add the chopped mushrooms, garlic and thyme. Keep cooking and stirring occasionally until the mushrooms have softened and developed a bit of colour.
- Add the ground meat to the pan, break it up with a utensil and let sit for a few minutes to cook. Continue to break up the meat and stir on occasion until it is all cooked through and mixed well with the other ingredients.
- Add the beer, butter and flour. Stir and mix well until the liquids in the pan have thickened.
- Set meat aside to cool.
- Preheat your oven to 375F
- Following the thawing instructions on the puff pastry package, pull out the sheets and unroll onto the counter. Make sure to leave the party on the parchment paper it comes with as it will aid in things not getting too sticky.
- Cut the pastry sheet in half lengthwise and add a few spoonfuls of the cooled meat mixture to one half of the sheet. Make sure to keep away from the edges as you will need clean edges in order to close up the pockets. Top with some shredded cheddar.
- Fold the bare half of the pastry over the filling and line up the corners. Pull gently to avoid tearing.
- Grab a fork and pressy down along the seams to seal the pasty edges together. Poke small holes in the top to help release steam during cooking.
- Repeat until you’ve filled your pies and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Place in the oven and cook until golden brown and flaky. About 25-30 minutes.
- Enjoy hot with your cheese sauce or alternatively allow the pies to cool, wrap in foil and freeze them to make awesome packable snacks for your next adventure.