Name: Ox Cheek and Stout Pie
Yield: Serves 4—6
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: 1 medium egg, beaten, to glaze; 1.5 litres beef stock (or a good beef stock cube dissolved in this amount of hot water); 1 teaspoon chopped thyme; 25 g butter; about 150 ml cold water; plain flour for dusting; 1 bay leaf; about 1 teaspoon cornflour (optional); salt and freshly ground black pepper; 60 g butter, chilled and coarsely grated; 1 teaspoon tomato purée; 250 ml stout; 85 g shredded beef suet; 225 g self-raising flour; 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed; a piece of bone marrow long enough to act as a pie funnel, marrow scooped out and reserved (optional); 1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped; 2 tablespoons plain flour; 1 kg ox cheeks, trimmed; 2 tablespoons vegetable oil; 1 teaspoon salt

Preparation info

Serves
4—6

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

British Seasonal Food

By Mark Hix

Published 2008

About

You will probably need to ask your butcher in advance for ox cheeks, or you could use beef flank, feather blade or shin instead for this pie. Trying to be a bit clever here, I’ve used a piece of scooped-out bone marrow as the pie funnel, but you don’t need to go to that much trouble, you could just use a normal pie funnel.

Ingredients

1 kg ox cheeks, trimmed
2 tablespoons plain flour
salt and freshly ground black pe

Method

Cut the ox cheeks into even 3—4 cm pieces. Season ½ tablespoon of the flour with salt and pepper and lightly flour the meat. Heat the oil in a heavy-based frying pan and fry the meat in two or three batches over a high heat until nicely browned. Remove and set aside.

Heat the butter in a lar