Potato Top Pie is a uniquely New Zealand pie — a meat filling (beef mince in gravy) baked in a pastry shell, topped not with a pastry lid but with a thick layer of creamy mashed potato that goes golden and crusty in the oven. It is the most popular hot pie in NZ bakeries, the comfort food of every Kiwi winter.
Potato Top Pie (also called potato-topped pie) is a specifically New Zealand invention — the combination of a traditional meat pie with a shepherd's-pie-style mashed potato top exists nowhere else. NZ has the highest per-capita pie consumption in the world, and the potato top is the most beloved variant. Every bakery, service station, and dairy sells them, hot from the warmer. The pie is a hand-food — eaten from the foil, on a building site, at a rugby match, on a cold beach.
A golden pastry shell with a fluffy, golden-crusted mash top, the beef filling bubbling underneath. Bite through the potato (crispy on top, soft inside), through the pastry, into the savory meat gravy. It is the most satisfying single-handed food in New Zealand — a meal in one hand.
The pie is built in two layers: a bottom-only pastry shell (shortcrust), filled with a thick beef mince-and-gravy mixture, then topped with seasoned mashed potato (with butter and milk). The potato is piped or spread on top, roughened with a fork (for crispy peaks), and the whole is baked until the pastry is golden and the potato crusts. The key is that the gravy must be thick enough not to seep into the pastry bottom.
Variations
Some use steak instead of mince; some add cheese to the potato top; some add a puff-pastry bottom instead of shortcrust.
On the Palate
Where Potato Top Pie sits in the New Zealand flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
8 steps · 50 min active + 40 min waiting
- 13 min
Preheat oven to 200°C.
- 23 min
Line a pie dish (or 6 individual dishes) with shortcrust pastry.
- 318 min
Brown 500 g ground beef with 1 diced onion; add 2 tbsp tomato paste, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 tbsp flour, and 300 ml beef stock; simmer 15 minutes until thick.
Watch outCook the mince gravy down until it's thick and glossy — a thin, runny filling soaks straight into the pastry base and leaves it soggy.
- 43 min
Spoon the filling into the pastry shell.
- 520 min
Boil 600 g potatoes; drain; mash with 50 g butter and 100 ml milk; season.
- 65 min
Spread or pipe the mash over the filling; roughen the top with a fork.
Watch outRough the mashed-potato top all over with a fork — those raised ridges are what crisp into golden peaks in the oven.
- 730 min
Bake 30 minutes until the pastry is golden and the potato is crusted.
Watch outBake until the pastry is golden and the potato peaks have crusted brown — pull it early and the base stays pale and undercooked.
- 85 min
Rest 5 minutes before serving.
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