What is an Australian meat pie?
An Australian meat pie is a hand-sized pie with flaky pastry filled with minced beef and gravy, often eaten with tomato sauce. It is one of Australia's most popular takeaway foods, especially at the footy.
Meat pies came to Australia with British settlers and became a staple of bakeries, service stations and sporting events. Brands such as Four'N Twenty, founded in Bendigo in 1947, became household names.
Australians eat millions of pies every year. They are a classic snack at Australian rules football matches, where a pie and sauce at half-time is a tradition.
Pie variations
Besides plain mince and gravy, bakeries sell pies filled with steak and kidney, chicken, curry, mushroom and pepper steak. Gourmet bakeries compete in national pie awards.
In Adelaide, the pie floater is a meat pie served upside down in a bowl of thick pea soup, topped with tomato sauce.
Pies are usually eaten hot, straight from a paper bag, and a sauce bottle at the counter is a standard sight in bakeries. Some bakeries are famous enough to draw long queues of travellers, such as roadside bakeries on highways between major cities.
The pie's place in national culture is so strong that it appears in songs, advertising and political campaigns, and eating a pie at the footy is seen as an Aussie rite of passage.
Did You Know?
In the 1970s, a famous advertising jingle linked football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars as Australian favourites.