Pâté en croûte – delicious recipe with quite a few variation possibilities

Today I will show you how to make a Pâté en croûte yourself. It consists of a meat filling with savory ingredients. The filling is coated with a lard dough or puff pastry. Afterwards, it is baked in the oven.

I make the dough for the Pâté myself. But you can also use a store bought puff pastry.

But now enough talk…

Here you can find the complete Pâté en croûte recipe as a video or to read through.

Have fun and good luck making it!

Table of Contents

Pâté en croûte – What do you need to make it?

Per terrine mold you will need:

400 g pork butt
100 g lean beef
250 g brown mushrooms
125 g bacon
75 g onion
65 g pistachios
50 ml cream
50 ml milk
50 g dry white bread
9.5 g salt
2.5 g cure#1 (Alternative: normal salt -> pâté will not be pink but rather grayish when cut)
2 g black pepper

For the dough you need either ready-made puff pastry or alternatively, you make a lard pie dough yourself:

Make your own lard pie dough

325g flour
250 g lard
90 g cold water
6 g salt
2,5 g sugar

Leftovers of this dough are also excellent for a simple apple pie.

Aspic for the filling

About 150ml vegetable broth
Aspic powder (enough to make it firm to the bite)

The equipment to make Pâté en croûte

Pâté dish / glasses / aluminium dish / other dishes

It is up to you which dish you use to make the Pâté. You can achieve the same result with any shape.

Meat grinder

You need the meat grinder, also called a mincer, to “grind” the meat, which means the meat is finely chopped.

Pâté en croûte – Step-By-Step Instructions

The dough:

1. Cut the lard into cubes.

2. Put the flour, salt and sugar in a food processor together with the lard.

3. Always turn the food processor on and off. The lard and flour should mix a little, but you should still see whole pieces of lard. This is the only way to get a nice crust later.

4. Gradually add the cold water.

5. The dough is now ready. It is not completely homogeneous, but it should combine when pressed together. Put it in the fridge for at least 2 hours. The dough can also be prepared the day before.

The pate:

1. Quarter your mushrooms first and finely dice the onion.

2. Put the mushrooms in a hot pan without oil. The goal is for the mushrooms to lose some water and brown.

3. If the mushrooms have lost some water and are brown, you can add some oil.

4. Now you can add the diced onions to the mushrooms.

5. When the onions are translucent, remove the pan from the heat and let them cool down.

6. Cut the meat into wolf-sized pieces. You can vary the size depending on how big your meat grinder is.

7. Now you can grind the meat. Depending on how coarse or fine you want your Pâté en croûte to be, you can use different perforated discs here. To be honest, this is a matter of taste. I personally use the finest perforated disc. But as I said … it must taste good to you!

8. Cut the bacon into small cubes.

9. Add the bacon to the minced meat together with the spices and the rest of the ingredients and the onion-mushroom mixture and mix it all together.

10. Mix the ingredients until they form a homogeneous mass.

11. grease the baking dish generously.

12. Roll out your lard dough to a thickness of about 0.5 cm. Alternatively, you can now use the ready-made puff pastry.

13. Place your mold on the dough and cut the corners. This will help the dough to go into the mold more nicely.

14. Roll the dough on your rolling pin and put it into the form.

15. Fill the tureen with the meat and mushroom mixture. Make sure there is as little air in the mixture as possible.

16. Cut off the excess dough around the edge.

17. Put some egg mixed with water on top of the pie.

18. Roll out a lid from the excess dough and put it on the pie.

19. Cut off the excess dough at the edge and press the lid again.

20. Cut small holes in the pastry lid. This is important so that the evaporated water can escape. You can also decorate the lid with the remaining dough. This is up to you.