Three Pies

What Types Of Pies Do We Love?

banner of Meat pies baking

There’s no doubt that we love our pies. In fact according to the Heart Foundation, New Zealanders consume 70 million pies every year! That’s around 16 pies per person. Yum.

According to our most recent survey of around 1,600 New Zealanders, both savoury and fruit pies tickle our tastebuds. Some of our favourite pie flavours (or fillings) included the following:

  • Steak and Cheese 27%
  • Mince and Cheese 19%
  • Potato Top 10%
  • Bacon and Egg 8%
  • Butter Chicken 7%
  • Chicken and Mushroom 7%
  • Smoked Fish 3%
  • Other 19%

If that’s not enough to get your tastebuds into gear, we also did a pop survey of Canstar staff, with some of the favourite in-house pie flavours including the following:

We like spicy flavours…

Sometimes the spice is in the filling…

“Best pie is pepper steak – with lots of ‘real’ chunks of meat, bought from a cake shop rather bread shop. It tastes great at the football or casual venue.”

“My favourite is a straight up chunky beef pie with a nice peppery sauce, with a crispy pastry and a bit of tomato sauce, made by a good bakery or pie shop. It’s best bought hot from the pie shop and eaten outdoors on a cold day, from the paper bag with hands. It’s good because good pastry is awesome and goes brilliantly with a savoury filling; a combination of crunchy pastry and sloppy filling is great. This is the only time I ever eat tomato sauce as it really enhances the meat flavour; it is the ultimate in portable food.”

Sometimes the spice is in the sauce…

“Chicken and vegie is my favourite, brought home from the bakery. The oozing creamy sauce encased with the crispy pie shell makes it awesome, particularly with a dash of chilli sauce.”

“I love a shepherd’s pie with sweet chilli sauce. I know it seems like a strange combination but it really works. Only issue is that most bakeries don’t sell little packets of sweet chilli sauce so I do go to the extent of having to bring my own…”

Sometimes condiments simply aren’t needed

“I love a good meat pie, and they’re harder to come by than you think. I’d much rather go an independent bakery or proper pie shop, the filling and pastry is so much better each time.

Beef and Mushroom pies are always my go to pie. No condiments are needed if it is a good pie. I sometimes make them at home but they are more of the Sheppard’s pie style but with cauliflower mash in place of potato mash.”

“The best pie I have ever had is a plain pie at place called Jochheims Pies which is in Bowen. The perfect combination of flakey top, crunchy crust and the gravy on the inside was amazing. Definitely no sauce needed. This was 20 years ago though….”

“Favourite flavour is definately chunky steak, mainly because who doesn’t love steak?  Also steak and mushroom can go down well too sometimes. A good pie doesn’t need a condiment.  Only if it’s bad should it need tomato sauce.”

We also like niche ingredients

A few of the more niche pie ingredients included the following:

“I’ve had an amazing wagyu and mushroom pie at a bakery in a small town that I was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sadly I’ve never made it back there for another one.”

“I have to admit that I’m a bit partial to rabbit pie.”

“As a twenty year old I worked in a pie shop in Vancouver called ‘Al a Mode’ (In French this means ‘in the fashion’ but in North America you order pies “Al a mode” and it comes with ice cream). We made some amazing pies each day but my favourite was a turkey and cranberry savoury pie.

It was like Christmas dinner wrapped in pastry – totally yummy. Perfect for a cold Vancouver winter’s day.”

 

And finally, it’s amazing the lengths that some people will go to for a pie…

“I really like the mushroom pie at a place in Townsville called Pukka Pies. The mushrooms weren’t diced into tiny pieces, you could see the layer of mushrooms on the top. They had a radio ad that was extremely catchy, to the point that I spent ten years trying to find the pie shop on the internet and finally found it.”

That’s dedication!

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