“Tourtières” Meat Pies
- Annemarie Bolduc
- Jun 20, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 11, 2025
Discover the Québec tourtières, an ancestral meat pie dish always found on our holiday tables.
To smell and taste the distinct flavour of traditional Québec tourtières is something that brings Québécois expatriates all over the world straight back home, filled with memories. What always comes to my mind is a white Christmas, my family, and our holiday buffets where meat pies were never missing. Every family and every region has its own speciality. Like most traditional Québec home cuisine, it is nothing fancy, but it is deeply comforting.
In Québec, there is an endless debate, when adding potatoes and using minced meat, if it should be called pâté à la viande (meat pie) or tourtière, but in the region where I am from, either works! The “Tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean” is a totally different recipe made with diced meat and thicker pastry, and is an iconic dish specific to the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. Otherwise, most Québec meat pies are commonly made with two or three types of minced meat (like beef, pork, veal or game meat). The traditional seasoning is usually nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and dried herbs. I make my tourtières every winter, keeping one of the two pies in the freezer so we can enjoy warming it on the "barbie" (barbecue) around Christmas or New Year's. Read my story “Tourtière” in Summer for more.
Single Québec-style meat pies • Photography © Bottle and Brush Studio 2018
When I did this photo session a few years ago with individual pies (how Aussies usually like them), I had to keep an eye on my lovely husband… But once the shoot was finished, I let him taste one, and he told me, “That’s the best pie I’ve ever had in my life.”
RECIPE
My family-style recipe has now found its place in my cookbook, Québec Kitchen Abroad. To be part of my cookbook journey and see more recipe content, follow @snowyfoodie!
