Pieburgers

Makes 9 pieburgers

These popular pies make great picnic food, and are very good in packed lunches. They may eaten immediately, refrigerated for 2 - 3 days, or frozen for some weeks.

Photo: Simon Holst Everyday Easy Cooking

Ingredients

Pastry

• 2 cups plain flour
• 125 g cold butter, cut into cubes
• 1 cup (about 50g) grated tasty cheese
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup cold water

Filling

• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 500g beef mince
• 1 packet dried mushroom or onion soup
• 2 Tbsp tomato sauce
• 2 Tbsp plain flour

Method

First make the pastry. Put the flour, cubed cold butter and grated cheese into a food processor and pulse until the butter is chopped into small pieces.

Add the water, a little at a time, and pulse until the mixture is just wet enough to be pressed together and formed into a ball. Don't use more water than necessary.

Form this dough into two smaller balls, and refrigerate them while you make the filling.

Heat the oven to 200 C with a rack just above the middle.

Break the egg into a large bowl, and beat it with a fork. Put half the beaten egg into a small container and leave the rest in the bowl. Add the remaining ingredients for the filling to the egg in the bowl, and stir with a fork until everything is well blended, then with wet hands form the mixture into nine balls.

On a floured board, roll out each of the pastry balls to a 30cm square.

Put the nine balls of mince in three rows of three, on one pastry square. Flatten the balls slightly. Add a teaspoon of water to the beaten egg and brush around each portion of filling with some of the egg mixture.

Carefully place the remaining dough over the meatballs, and press down between each row, and around the edges, with the edge of your hand, a thin rolling pin or a long thin bottle.

Cut between each pieburger with a sharp knife, and trim the outer edges neatly, then lift the pieburgers onto a baking sheet that has been covered with a piece of baking paper.

Cut one or two small vents through the top pastry, near the middle of each pieburger, and decorate the edges of the burgers if you want to. Roll out the pastry scraps to make ornamental shapes to put on top of the pieburgers if desired.

Brush the remaining egg mixture over the pieburgers.

Bake at 200 C for 20 to 30 minutes until nicely browned, then at 150 C for another 15 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Enjoy!