Crunchy Brown Bits

Recently I was lamenting that the tastiest part of my home cooked pot pies was the bit of sauce that bubbled over the top and crisped up on the baking sheet while it was cooking. The pot pies themselves were great too, but goodness those crunchy brown bits were divine.

This lead to wanting to figure out how to get more of that flavour inside of the pot pies. I already brown the meat to within an inch of its life before demummifying it with a long simmer, so that was already at 105% flavour capacity. Lacking inspiration for what to try next, I decided to ask the AI what flavour of glue I should add to the recipe.

It came back with a slightly peculiar recommendation, but it at least seemed like it would be more successful than trying to use pureed ham to frost a cake, so I decided to give it a try.

First up, I prepared the meat as per usual, as there was nothing left to optimize there. I also sweat up the veggie trio (celery, carrot and onion) as I normally do.

This makes a reasonably aromatic addition with some nice texture, but unlike the meat it has not been fully exploited for its maximum flavour potential, so let's get on with that.

Out comes 500g of the mix, and into my stick blender cup it goes.

As you might imagine, some stick blending comes next.

So I've now succeeded in making a pound of baby food. Ok. Next we need to concentrate and develop the flavours, so it gets spread out in an even layer in, very importantly, a non-stick oven-safe frying pan.

Spreading it out like this will help it dehydrate faster, which is a prerequisite for getting to browning temperature. The other prerequisite is being somewhere where it can get to browning temperature, so into the oven it goes, set to 450 freedom degrees, alongside the meat which is still browning.

An hour later, it comes out looking like this.

Now these big veggie-leather flakes aren't really all that useful as is, so they'll go in with the meat for the next step.

And that next step involves drowning in stock.

And spices.

Then the lid goes on and back into the oven it goes.

Some time later, quite a bit longer than usual because I accidentally bought pork loin instead of pork shoulder and simply refused to rehydrate properly, it comes out of the oven and gets hit with a potato masher to break it up. It also gets a quarter cup of flour mixed with some reserved pork fat to thicken it, and that's brought back to a boil and stirred well.

It is, at this point, unquestionably very brown. It's also done, so into the remaining veggies it goes.

And then into the pie shells.

Usually I end up with 425g or so of filling per pie, but because nearly 500g of water was boiled off during the veggie roasting stage, the filling is much more concentrated now, so splitting it amongst the 6 pies results in only about 315g per. (This also tends to vary a bit depending on what size package of meat I happen upon, how many veggies I load up with, etc)

On go the tops, and then a nice shiny coat of egg wash.

Then into the freezer as per usual. I cooked one up for lunch today and I have to say the result was fantastic.

The filling was very dark, rich and flavourful, and it no longer left me pining for the crunchy brown bits that escaped containment. So I guess chalk one up for the clanker, I seem to have survived its cooking advice.