It was my husband's French Canadian family's Christmas Eve tradition to serve Tourtiere.

This is the recipe I've been making for over 30 years.

Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table

Tourtiere
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This filling is for one pie. I usually triple the ingredients and make three at a time. I bake all of the pies and when cold freeze.

Pastry to two crust pie.

1 large onion chopped
2 or 3 tablespoons oil or butter
1 clove garlic
1-1/2 pounds of pork
1 cup gravy or stock (saved from turkey or pork)
2 russett potatoes (par boiled)
2 tablespoons chopped celery leaves
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon thyme,
1/2 teaspoon rosemary (or more)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon allspice, more to taste

Saute the onion in oil until transparent, add the garlic and saute for one minute and then add the ground pork. Cook until the meat is brown. Add 1/2 cup stock or gravy and cover pan and simmer for about 15 or 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 425°F

Uncover pan and reduce liquid to 2 or 3 tablespoons. Add the seasoning and stir to blend.Adjust seasonings to taste. Add the coarsely chopped potatoes and add enough additional gravy to moisten. ( Should not be to wet.)

Spoon filling into pastry shell. Use egg glaze on along overhand. Place crust on top and trim. Fold the top edge under the bottom and crimp edge. Brush with egg glaze and decorate with extra pastry if desired. Sprinkle with Coarse salt.

Bake in the lower third of oven for 15 minutes and then raise to the middle shelf, lower heat to 350 and continue to bake until golden brown. About 45 to 55 minutes.

Butter-Lard Pastry
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2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup lard (or shortening- Crisco)
5 to 6 tablespoons of ice water

(note: if using for a sweet pie, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar.)

Mix flour with salt, and cut in butter and lard.

(Note: I use the Cuisinart to cut in my fat and then move the mixture to a bowl to add the water by hand).
I like to have to do this by feel which I find I can't do by machine)

Put flour mixture in bowl and add water mixing with a fork until pastry comes together. Form in to a ball and cut in two pieces. Form each into a round flat disc and refrigerate for 1 hour.

The only tourtiere I've ever had was the one I made about a month ago and I used Ann's recipe. So I'm no expert on tourtiere's but I can say it was delicious and it will likely be on my Christmas Eve table as well. I did substituted Cooks Illustrated's vodka crust.

I use Ann's recipe, as well. Follow it to a "t" lol except I confess to using store-bought pie crust. I'm not big on working with flour. My husband's parents were French Canadian and now that his mother is gone, he loves it when I make this pie for him. (It's better than hers was).

seagrass

I'm of French Canadien heritage on both sides of my family. For the last 70+ years, there's been a huge family rivalry over who makes the best Tourtiere ( I've thrown my pie in the ring for the last 45 of them).

Every year is different. We all cook Tourtiere by smell and taste rather than be tied up with quantities. The reason is we all agree one ingredient can change the whole personality of the dish like a more or less pungent onion or improperly ground pork or fresh vs old spices. I'm not sure why but Tourtiere's tastes seem to be heavily influenced by the slightest variations in the quality of the ingredients. Or maybe we're just hypersensitive. :-)

First of all start with a 2-crust pie crust recipe. Use your favorite, when you do something well why change it.

For the filling here are a couple of previous years winning recipes:

Tourtiere 2008 (Quebec Version)
(Makes 1 large 9" pie)

3 lbs. lean ground pork (Have it double ground)
1/2 large yellow onion (Make sure it’s a pungent yellow onion; it makes a huge difference in the flavor.)
1 small red skinned potato peeled
3 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
Ginger, nutmeg, dry mustard, allspice, salt & pepper
(Seasoning is subjective, taste as you go. This was the first year I tried using dry mustard and it was a hit. It gave the filling a subtle balance.)
2 crust pie crust

Place the pork, potato, onions and garlic in a pan and just cover with water. Bring to a boil. Break the meat apart with a potato masher being careful not to break the potato. Reduce heat & simmer until water is almost gone. Remove the potato and discard. Drain the meat in a colander to drain off some of the fat but not all. Return the meat to the pan, add spices to taste, cook to meld flavors. Cool the meat mixture. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Prepare pie plate with bottom crust, add cooled meat mixture. Top with remaining pie crust, flute edge and brush with egg wash, (1 egg and 1 tbs. water beaten together).

Bake pie for about 45 minutes.

Suzanne's Tourtiere (Charlevoix version)

2 lb. lean pork in 1/2" cubes (I usuallu saute this in the salt pork drippings before I add it to the pie. Make sure you drain off the salt pork dripping when done or the pie will be very salty.)
½ lb. salt pork, minced (and sauteed until brown then drained. Save dripping to saute pork in.)
2 lb. potatoes, peeled in 1/2" cubes
1 large yellow onion, 1/2" dice
2 large cloves of garlic, minced fine
Herb de Provence or savory & fennel to taste
Fresh ground black pepper
Pie crust for 9”, two-crust pie
Boiling water (I use water and vermouth. You can
also use stock but be sure it is unsalted.)

In a deep casserole dish (2 qt), place one pie crust and pat to fit with crust over lapping the sided slightly. Add ingredients to casserole. Cover with other pie crust, seal and cut a large hole in the middle. Pour boiling water in hole to top of ingredients. brush with egg wash, (1 egg and 1 tbs. water beaten together).

Bake in preheated 350 oven for 1 hour; adding water as needed to prevent drying out. Reduce heat to 300 and bake 1½ hours, adding water as needed to prevent drying out. The goals is to have a moist filling with no water at the end.

Note: It's a bit of a trick to get the filling moist using the method above so I use the following when I can't babysit the oven. Saute salt pork until golden and drain. Then brown pork in salt pork dripping and drain. Put both porks and all the reamining ingredients except pie crust in a pot on top of the stove, cover with water & vermouth. (It doesn't need to be boiling water.)

Bring mixture to a boil and reduce to simmer and cook just until the water is gone. Cool the meat mixture. Prepare casserole with pie crust, add meat, cover with second crust, brush on egg wash and bake in preheated 350 oven for 45-60 minutes.

moosemac - I hail from French Canadian stock, too, and your post rang so true to me. My mother was the Tourtiere Queen in our family for decades (she's the youngest of her family of 10, so that's high praise) but it's been too much for her to do the pies for Christmas Eve recently and I'm among a trio who have been trying to recreate her great pies.

We all have the basic recipe we jotted down when we learned to make them with her, but it comes down to a matter of tasting for seasoning and eyeing the filling for texture (as in, should we add a bit more stock or should we hold back on some potatoes, etc.)

One ingredient in our family recipe that I didn't see in others above is ground beef. Yes, I know it's sacrilege in some families, but ours has to have a bit of beef or "something's missing."

It's fun to see and compare these family recipes and I'm tempted to try others. But, of course, it can only be our own served up on Christmas Eve!