It is a lot of hassle for 2 meals, making your own steak & kidney pie.
After all it takes about 2 hours (ok you aren't slaving away all that time), pastry is a notoriously fickle product, and there ends up being a fair bit of washing up (not just from the gore-fest that is coring kidneys). I'll admit I could have bought "jus-roll"(*) or similar and made my life at least a bit more washing up free. I could have just bought a pie.
Buying steak & kidney pie is fraught with difficulty. You see as far as I'm concerned a pie has three layers.
1:- Pastry base, no base, its not a pie (at best its a liddy)
2:- Filling, the most obvious one
3:- Lid, made of pastry (miss this off & its a tart or maybe a flan)
Most of the recipes I found where for steak & kidney liddies (yes even Gordon Ramsey, and more shockingly the 2 fat ladies). I had to fettle together about 4 recipes & my own knowledge of cooking meat to get where I wanted to be. Which was a proper pie, baked in a dish and put on the plate as a quadrant of lovliness.
So yes worth the hassle. If it was only to have the kidneys cooked right (ie not overdone shrivelled rubbery things that you end up with from store bought pie(**)). Since the autumn seems to be trying to arrive I forsee more offal & more pie in the future, I might even go for 2 day hot pot.
(*) I think there is half a pack in the freezer left over from custard tarts
(**) I understand that the way frozen/ready meals are sold it means the kidney has to be cooked through before they leave for the shops, doesn''t mean I have to like it though
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