“Tourtière” in Summer
- Annemarie Bolduc
- Dec 11, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 11, 2025
My story of a Québec traditional holiday meat pie, cooked on the barbecue in Australia.
What Québécois call a tourtière, or pâté à la viande, is simply a traditional meat pie, often prepared for holiday party buffets but available all year long in grocery shops. There are many recipes, and every family or region across Canada has its own specialty. The pie filling commonly consists of a combination of ground meat and, in some areas, pieces of game meat, such as moose. What makes this dish taste unique in Canadian folkloric cuisine is its signature seasoning. There is always more than one pie in the oven during Christmas and New Year celebrations. Probably influenced by British and French colonisation, other Québec-style savoury pies, like chicken or salmon pies, are also made in ways you won’t really find anywhere else. In Australia, meat pies are iconic in different ways and variations as well, available in bakeries in single sizes and mostly consumed as takeaway food.
Pork and beef "tourtières" meat pies making • Photos © Bottle and Brush Studio 2024
While writing this post, I discovered little “mince tarts” in an Australian café nearby, which sparked my curiosity. I researched the ingredients used for the filling, and it turns out that “mincemeat” is actually not minced meat. That sounds very similar, which confused me at first. The mixture combines dried fruits, nuts, spices, and liquor. It is a sweet Christmas treat that traditionally comes from Britain. Originally, it was made with minced meat and spices, a bit like the Canadian tourtières, and the name “mincemeat” has remained.
I made my first tourtière from scratch on my first Christmas Down Under, as they are usually made by my mum, my dad, aunties, and, in the old days, my grandmothers. It helped me feel a little closer to home, and I wanted my Aussie husband to discover one of the classics of our family’s traditional dishes. I got the idea of cooking a tourtière on the "barbie" (Aussie nickname for barbecue) and much preferred it as a dinner once the heat of a summer day had passed, as most people celebrate Christmas as a lunch in Australia. This is something you would rarely do in Québec summertime, except for a Noël du campeur, a Christmas in July type of celebration that some people enjoy while camping.
"HELL-O" 2020 This dinner photo session was meant to be our little New Year’s Eve project in 2020. We did not have much planned, and thought it would be better to stay home while there was an unusual number of bushfires across the state. Holidays all over New South Wales turned into a nightmare. We never imagined that a monster fire would quickly devastate our region.
On the morning of the 31st, we evacuated our home. Fortunately, our town and our house survived, and so did my mother-in-law’s farm in Batlow, where things got very bad. Sadly, the incredible loss and damage throughout the surrounding areas were heartbreaking. Two months later, we were slowly getting back to normal, recovering from this smoky, dry, traumatic mess, even though something in the news did not sound promising.
On a beautiful Sunday, as I planned to make this pie for dinner as a symbol of “ok, we got through this, let’s start this year over again, just you and I, at home”, the Australian government announced the international border closures. The global pandemic then became the new worry.
So, we enjoyed this one on the barbecue, and with the new COVID-19 situation, we were even more appreciative to be at home, safe, in our beautiful and productive yard, with our lovely cat and chookies. Puss was very impressed with the pie and could not stop staring at it. I took it as a compliment and took these photos.
Who does not love this smell of holiday... or meat? • Photos © Bottle and Brush Studio 2020
HOMECOOKING TIPS
Creating an authentic homemade tourtière is quite easy and does not require fancy or special ingredients that can only be found overseas. It simply takes a bit of time and planning, especially to make your pie crust. Some people like to combine beef and pork, while others prefer pork and veal in the filling. The mixture also includes onions and garlic, and in some regional recipes, potatoes. Seasonings that taste like chez nous (home) are a blend of nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, and herbs like savoury. The classic herbes salées, a salted preserved herb mix, is also a wonderful condiment for flavouring traditional meat pies. Tomato sauce (ketchup), served on a meat pie, is something most Canadians will also agree they can never go without.
More about tourtières in this post: "Tourtières" Meat Pies.
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!
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