African Meat Pies

African Meat Pies have a buttery, flakey crust and a hearty ground beef filling. They are a party favorite and popular in African countries like Cameroon, Nigeria, and Ghana.

This African variation of beef empanadas or Jamaican beef patties is baked, not fried. We love making them for family picnics. They can be enjoyed as a complete meal thanks to the meat filling!

If you love tasty snacks like this, also check out FLAVOURFUL FISH ROLLS – CAMEROONIAN FISH ROLL RECIPE and this guide on How To Make Puff Puff.

African Meat Pies Are Perfect For Celebrations

On the 9th of August, that’s two weeks ago, Mr. N and we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary! After thinking of w hat to make to celebrate with (because what’s any celebration without food??) we decided to make these EPIC meat pies. We call them Nigerian meat pies, Cameroonian meat pies or African meat pies because we've lived in both countries and experienced the same kind of meat pie in both of them. It’s the ultimate West African meat pie. Meat pies are also eaten in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Jamaica and in many other countries. Other names for it are beef empanadas, beef patties or pastelillos. So all of us, it’s our meat pie! And it’s coming to you with a Precious Kitchen touch, of course! You guys, African style meat pies for the mighty win! On that anniversary day, we ate then ate some more. All of our girls equally loved it. In fact, we had them as a complete meal because you know they are wholesome and very filling! We posted a picture on Instagram and Facebook and a lot of you wanted the recipe.

An Updated Recipe

Now we had to come back to the blog and edit our archaic meat pie recipe which has been begging for a revival. Let us confess something to you: in the early days of the blog, we hardly tested recipes properly. We mean we mostly eyeballed everything when we cooked and they almost always turned out great. Now when it came to sharing the recipe with others aka, here on the blog, we estimated the ingredients. Yeah, busted! But we're no longer in that place, you guys. We have been learning the art of food-writing, recipe-testing and all the bells and whistles of this job called food blogging. Sometimes we'll have to remake a recipe 3 times to get the perfect measurement of ingredients. It is a bit of a pain, but it is so rewarding. Because we can stand tall and proud and tell you to follow our exact measurements and make a recipe because we know the outcome will be glorious. That’s the case with these meat pies, the measurements are perfect! For best results, you must make the pie dough the same way we make ours. If you don’t understand anything about the recipe, feel free to leave a question below and we'll respond ASAP. The pie crust is perfectly buttery, flaky and so tasty. We could live on the pie crust alone. But then when you dig further into the pie, you taste the meat pie filling which is sufficiently meaty, savory, garlicky, moist and so rich. To take it up a notch, we added some slices of hardboiled egg to some of the pies. Welcome to meat pie heaven! Because we love you, we made a video to show you how to be a meat pie guru! The video is so detailed that we call it “Meat Pie University”. We share so many details in there, and if you follow our steps, we are certain that, be you man or woman, boy or girl, you will be able to impress everyone around you with very tasty meat pies! Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel yet? Click here to subscribe so you never miss any of our cooking videos.

• Yield: 12 servings
• Prep: 1 hour
• Cook: 25 minutes
• Total: 1 hour 25 minutes

Ingredients

For the dough

• 4 cups all-purpose flour, 500g or half kg
• 1 cup unsalted butter – softened, 226g or 16 tablespoons
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg – beaten
• 1 cup cold water

For the filling

• 1 pound ground beef, about half kg
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 stem green onions – chopped, sub with leeks
• 4 large garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• 1 large bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1 habanero pepper, optional
• 2 medium Irish potatoes – peeled and diced, about 1 cup chopped
• 3 small carrots (or 1 large carrot), diced
• 8 green beans, diced
• 2 small bell peppers (1 yellow, 1 red), sub with half a medium bell pepper
• 2 small stock cubes (Maggi), about 4g per cube
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon flour
• 2 tablespoons oil, we used olive oil

For the egg wash

• 1 egg – beaten

Method

1. Pour oil into a pot and heat for 2-3 minutes. Add in onions and saute while stirring from time to time until fragrant.
2. Add the minced garlic and stir to bring out the flavor. Let it cook with the onion for about a minute.
3. Add the ground beef and use a wooden spoon to break it as it cooks. This helps prevent it from forming chunks of meat. At the same time, incorporate the meat into the garlic/onion mixture. Stir meat until fully scattered and it has changed from pink to brown.
4. Add a cup and a half of water to the meat. Add in potatoes, bay leaf, white pepper, salt, stock cubes and habanero (if you choose to use it). Cover and cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft and break easily when touched.
5. Add in half a tablespoon of flour and stir well. Let the flour cook with the meat for about 3 minutes.
6. Add the green onions/leeks, carrots, green beans and bell pepper. Mix well to combine. Turn off the heat – the filling is ready.
7. In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt.
8. Add in softened butter and mix until the flour and butter are well incorporated.
9. Add beaten egg and cold water. Mix to form a dough. Transfer to a floured surface and knead lightly until smooth. Place dough back in the bowl and place in the fridge until ready for use.
10. Cut the dough into two. Place one half on a floured surface and roll out to about 1/8 of an inch thick.
11. Use a pie maker or a round lid (we used the lid of a water jar) to cut circles out of the rolled dough. Remove the excess dough from around the circles.
12. Place about a tablespoon and a half in the middle of each circle. Be careful not to overfill the circles! Now add a slice of hardboiled egg on the filling (note that we only used the hardboiled egg for half of the pies in this recipe. If you would love to use egg on all your pies, use two hardboiled eggs instead. )
13. Cover each circle to form a semi-circle. Press the edges with your hands then press with a fork.
14. Repeat the pie-making process with the rest of the dough.
15. Place all the pies in the refrigerator to rest for about 5 minutes. While they rest, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (or 180 degrees C).
16. Remove pies from fridge and brush generously with egg wash.
17. Bake in preheated oven for about 25 minutes until golden brown.
18. Enjoy!