Tourtine with beef flank and duck confit (poutine meat pie)
- Preparation 1 h 30
- Refrigeration 50 min
- Cooking 2 h
- Servings 6 to 8
- Freezing I don't recommend it
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🥧 A tourtière that swallowed a poutine
I took a tourtière, threw out the ground pork, and packed a whole poutine inside it instead. Fries, cheese curds, brown gravy, the entire thing, sealed between two crusts. It sounds like a joke. It isn’t.
This is the most over-the-top recipe on my site, and the one people ask me about every December. If you want the well-behaved version, it’s right here: my classic meat pie with beer.
🦆 Three meats, not a speck of ground beef
Beef flank steak gets diced against the grain and browned fast, nothing more. It finishes cooking inside the pie. The duck confit goes in shredded, and its fat ends up everywhere. The dry whisky sausage is there for smoke.
That’s the opposite of my Lac-Saint-Jean tourtiere, which leans on cubed pork and beef and eight hours in the oven.
🔥 The build is the whole trick
The bottom crust bakes empty for 30 minutes before anything touches it. That is what keeps it from turning to sponge under all that gravy.
Then it stacks: meat, gravy, fries, gravy. Two hours of oven time and a crust that hangs well over the sides.
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🧂 Go light on the salt, and I mean light
Between the duck confit, the sausage, the cheese curds and the canned poutine gravy, salt is already coming at you from four directions. Taste the meat mixture before it goes anywhere near the crust.
🥧 Blind-bake the bottom crust
The full 30 minutes. A pie this wet on raw dough gives you a bottom you cannot lift out of the pan.
🌡️ Watch the top on the home stretch
Over the last 45 to 50 minutes, if it browns faster than the inside heats through, tent it with foil and keep going.
🥄 You will have gravy left over, and that is on purpose
Four ladles go into the pie, two over the meat and two over the fries. Serve the rest in a small pitcher so everyone can add more on the plate. I use canned poutine gravy as the base and I have no problem saying so. If you would rather build it yourself, the brown gravy from my homemade poutine with mushrooms and beer does the job.
🧀 Cheese curds come out of the fridge at the last second
Cold, they hold their shape in the pie and stretch when you cut into it. Room temperature, they melt into a puddle before the pie even sees the oven. If you have never bought curds, they are fresh cheddar sold the day it is made, squeaky and unaged.
❄️ Freezing: I don’t recommend it
Same reason as my poutines. The fries go limp and the curds come back rubbery. Leftovers keep three days in the fridge and reheat at 350°F (175°C).
📅 Make-ahead
The meat filling can be built the night before and held in the fridge. The pie itself gets assembled and eaten the same day.
✅ What to serve with my tourtine?
Keep it simple. A green salad with a sharp vinaigrette, pickled beets, a spoonful of fruit ketchup on the side. The pie is doing all the work already. Whatever sits next to it should cut through, not pile on. And if you want to stay in the same family another night, there is my poutine with duck confit and Le Fêtard cheese.
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Ingredients
- 11 oz (325 g) spicy frozen fries (half a bag)
- Meat from 2 duck confit legs (1 lb 3 oz / 525 g), coarsely chopped
- 1 2/3 lb (750 g) beef flank steak, diced against the grain
- Olive oil
- 6 oz (175 g) pearl onions, ends trimmed
- 4 1/2 oz (125 g) dry whisky sausage, diced
- 3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) red ale
- 1/2 tablespoon (7.5 ml) ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tablespoon (7.5 ml) ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tablespoon (7.5 ml) ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) savory
- 12 oz (350 g) very cold cheese curds
- 5 oz (150 g) grated Louis d’Or cheese (or another firm raw cow’s milk cheese)
- 2.2 lb (1 kg) pie dough, split in two
- 1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon (5 ml) water
Ingredients for the sauce
- 1 can (13.5 oz / 398 ml) store-bought poutine gravy
- 1 envelope (1.2 oz / 34 g) demi-glace mix
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) red ale
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) water
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Preparation
- Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Place fries on baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes or until fries are semi-crisp. Stir halfway through cooking. Set aside.
- Place duck meat in a large bowl and set aside.
- In a large skillet heated over medium-high heat, drizzle with a good amount of olive oil and add half the flank steak. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Brown for 3 to 4 minutes and pour into a bowl. Repeat with remaining flank steak and set aside in the bowl. Add more oil if necessary.
- In a small saucepan filled with boiling water, place onions and cook for 1 minute. Drain and peel.
- In a skillet heated over medium low heat, place onions, sausage and garlic and drizzle with olive oil. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring.
- Add beer and cook for 2 minutes to reduce slightly. Pour with the flank steak, add the spices, season lightly with salt and pepper and mix. Let cool for 20 minutes. Add cheese curds and grated cheese then mix. Set aside.
- Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).
- On a well-floured surface, roll out the pie dough to obtain two circles of about 12″.
- In a well greased 10.5″ pie pan, put the first dough layer and form a nice thick crust that extends well beyond the sides. This way, it won’t shrink too much during baking. (Keep the second round in the fridge.)
- Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, place sauce ingredients in a saucepan and whisk to dissolve lumps. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes to thicken. Stir occasionally.
- Put the meat mixture in the pie and spread it out. Drizzle with 2 ladles of sauce, put the fries on top and add 2 more ladles of sauce. Keep the remaining sauce warm for serving. Cover with the other pie shell and seal the edges, forming a thick crust.
- Brush with egg mixture and cut an X in the center. Place in oven and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until crust is golden brown and mixture is bubbling. If the crust browns too fast, tent it with foil and keep baking. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting and serving, with the rest of the sauce on the side.
It’s a word I made up by jamming tourtière and poutine together. A tourtière is a spiced Quebec meat pie, usually built on ground meat. My tourtine keeps the crust and the spices, but the filling is a full poutine: diced beef flank, duck confit, fries, cheese curds and brown gravy.
Flank steak is a long, lean cut from the belly of the animal, sold as bavette in Quebec. Skirt steak or flat iron both work here. Whatever you use, dice it against the grain or it comes out chewy.
Yes. You need 2.2 lb (1 kg) total, split into two 12-inch rounds. Grocery store dough usually comes in small packages, so check the weight before you buy a single box.
Because four ladles of gravy sit on it for close to an hour. Thirty minutes of dry heat sets the dough first.
The meat filling holds overnight in the fridge, and assembling the next day is easy. The pie itself gets eaten the day it’s baked. Don’t skip the ten-minute rest either, or the filling runs out the second you cut a slice.
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