Pork Pies

Pre-heat the oven to 170 C.

Take the meat and filling ingredients, mix all this together very well in a mixing bowl and set aside in the fridge.

Heat the water in a saucepan with the lard and butter until melted, gently, it needn't boil.

Place the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. I used my Kenwood mixer with dough hook and making a well in the middle add the beaten eggs.

Start mixing and slowly add the water and fat mixture until you have a smooth and soft dough. Add more flour or warm water to get smooth soft dough.

Cover and chill for about 1 hr.

Roll out the pastry to about 4mm thickness and cut circles of pastry about twice the size of your chosen baking tin.

I use  a deep muffin tray which I grease well, then line with the rolled out pastry with some good overlap which you will need to crimp with.

Fill with the pork and make a lid and crimp shut, using the egg wash to stick together. (I had to lift the pie out of the tin to crimp and then set back into the tin.)

Make a hole in the middle to let the steam escape.

Bake in the oven 170C/Gas 4 for 1 hour, until golden brown.

Jelly or not? It does keep the meat moist and soaks in so you won't get a huge amount of jelly unless you keep adding more stock which is time consuming. I used 1 pint of pork stock with the equivalent amount of gelatine to set and poured it into the warm pies, no jelly layer but succulent meat. If adding jelly then you must chill the pies in the fridge until it is set.