All About Australian Meat Pies! (By Someone Who Doesn't Really Like Meat)

I'm vegetarian-ish. But even I can see there's something to this cooking-meat-inside-dough thing.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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I have a theory that every culture in the world has some delectable dish that involves meat and/or veggies cooked inside dough: dumplings in Asia; samosas in India; empanadas in Spain and Latin America; ravioli and calzones in Italy; shawarma in the Middle East; and on and on and on.

Dumplings, samosas, empanadas, and meat pies, oh my! Photos by Abhishek Sanwa Limb, kabir cheema, Lucas Oriogun, and Scott Eckersley.

Any aliens viewing Planet Earth in hiding have almost certainly noted a strong pattern:

Dough + meat and veggies = extreme human happiness!

Australia’s participation in the universal human need to wrap meat and veggies in dough and cook it is the meat pie, which is easily one of the country’s most popular dishes — maybe even its “national” dish.

A classic Australian meat pie.

Humans have been making pies for at least six thousand thousand years — naturally, there are even pictures of pies on the walls of Egyptian tombs. And the first pies were almost certainly meat ones.

For the first few thousand years, the dough of a pie was probably just something to hold the meat while it cooked, and it wasn’t eaten. But then around 1304 to 1237 B.C. — and it astounds me that they can tell this just from drawings on tomb walls — the chefs to the Egyptian pharaohs began adding honey and nuts to the dough, making that part of the meal too.

Later, meat pies spread to Greece and Rome, and later still, to Europe and England, where the dough was definitely eaten — but possibly only by the staff of the manor while the lords and ladies of the house were the ones to eat the meat inside.

Meat pies are, of course, still very popular in the U.K. and Canada. They’ve traditionally been made with, well, meat — usually chopped or minced beef, lamb, chicken, or pork. Often they’re eaten with sauces — ketchup, garlic aioli, or various curries.

They’re different from American pot pies in that pot pies tend to be bigger and have more vegetables and gravy. They’re also lighter on the stomach.

Meat pies came to Australia with — who else? — the convicts in the 18th century, where meat pies were probably part of their rations.

“Australians just love a good meat pie,” says Daniel Roberts, the owner of Oliver’s Pies in Avalon Beach, Australia. “They’ll even smash down an average one and then maybe complain about it later. They’re just so easy and convenient.”