Maltese beef & pea pie

Profile picture for user The Roadside Pie King
The Roadside P… on 22 Jan 2026 at 13:50
Pie

Maltese beef and pea pie. ( My mom's meat pastisti filling) 

 I made a very quick oil based pie pastry yesterday. It turned out just a little too dry. That being said,bI got it into and on top of the pan. Smile.

Pie

A good-looking pie.  I've been starting to make meat pies, but the smaller, one-person ones (as well as empanadas with much the same fillings).  What's special about Maltese ones?

TomP

Thank you.  Is the meat really chopped, as opposed to ground meat? I definitely prefer chopped even though it takes more effort.

Here are the ingredients for an empanada filling I devised recently that I've been liking -

- Miripoix - all finely chopped
   - 1/2 medium yellow onion
   - 1/2 stalk celery
   - 1/2 medium carrot
- 1/3 Anaheim pepper finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic forced through garlic press
- 1T tomato paste
- 2 tsp Thai red curry paste
- ~3/4 lb flank steak finely chopped (chilled first)
- splash soy sauce
- splash Thai fish sauce (Red Boat)
- splash of heavy cream
- 1 russet potato peeled and diced small, steamed 7 minutes
 

This is our family's Maltese spice. I am sure many variations exist from family to family. The last two look to have been adjusted up from one tea spoon too one Tbsp. 

Profile picture for user Moe C

Moe C on 22 Jan 2026 at 15:07

Any beef pie that contains 6 onions has got to be good.

Hi , Moe.

I hope all is good with you. I really dislike when a recipe uses measurements like small onions. I mean, what is a small or large onion? The range of sizes makes it hard for us to gage. So, the onions I had on hand were about the size of my closed fist. I figured the recipe was calling for a lot of onions. That being said, six at the size of my fist seemed like over kill for only one pound of beef. I went with four onions. The filling was perfect! So delicious!