I started by making a steak and kidney pie filling to exactly the same recipe as the pie on this page.

But instead of a pastry case, the crust for this pie was going to be made from meat - so I took about 250g of minced turkey breast and seasoned it with a generous pinch each of cumin and paprika, plus a pinch of turmeric to give it a nice golden colour.

I divided the turkey mixture into two, then divided off one third of each piece (i.e. divide the halves into a big bit and a smaller bit).

I formed the larger piece into a ball, then rolled it out between two sheets of plastic film.

I peeled one layer of plastic off and draped the flattened turkey patty into a greased pie dish, then I peeled off the other layer of plastic.

Leaving one layer of plastic on like this makes the delicate disc of flattened meat easy to handle without tearing it or putting a finger through accidentally.

I spooned in some of the steak and kidney pie filling mix, then added a little gravy.

I rolled out the smaller portion of turkey in the same way and (again, leaving one side of the film in place) draped it across the top.

From then on, I treated it exactly like any other meat pie - trimmed the edge with a sharp knife to remove excess crust, crimped the lid into place, pierced a hole in the centre and placed in the oven (180C) for 40 minutes.

I was pleasantly surprised by just how pastry-like it looked when it came out of the oven - but be not deceived - there is no floury crust here - this is all meat.

Eating The All Meat Pie

I'm calling this experiment a complete success - the pie held together, looked like a pie should, and was delicious to eat.

(It may look in need of a little gravy in this picture (I had plenty spare set aside in a jug) - I did deliberately leave it short of gravy because I anticipated that the meaty crust would shrink and I didn't want it just to squirt all out of the top.

If I make this again, I will probably inject some additional gravy through the top vent after cooking.

The Inside Out Pie

Now here is a pie made inside out - the crust is made from seasoned ground beef - filled with dumplings and gravy.

I started by making a steak and kidney pie filling to exactly the same recipe as the pie on the page 2 of this series.

About an hour before the end of cooking, I added some tiny dumplings - these were made from 25g each of self-raising flour, shredded suet and wheatgerm, mixed together with just enough water to make a stiff dough, then rolled into small balls.

As they cooked, the dumplings swelled and fluffed up to about one and a half times their original size.

To make the crust for the pie, I cheated a bit - I used shop-bought quarter pound hamburger patties - there just didn't seem to be much point going to all the trouble of mixing up and seasoning my own version of something so readily available.

If I had just rolled the burgers thinner, they would probably just shrink straight back when cooked - so I bashed them all over with a meat tenderising mallet - to break them up first.

Then I placed them between two sheets of plastic film and rolled them thin with a rolling pin, then peeled off one side of the film (but left the other in place so the thin layer of meat could be handled without tearing it.

I set the rolled out meat crust inside a greased pie dish and pressed it down into place.

Then I peeled off the second layer of plastic, leaving the dish lined with a thin layer of seasoned ground beef.

I carefully spooned the small dumplings into the meat pie cases and added a little gravy.

There's not a lot of difference, in terms of ingredients and proportions, between dumplings and pastry - that's why this is an inside out pie - the pastry that would normally form a crust is inside - and obviously isn't going to be cooked crisp, but instead, is made into soft, fluffy little dumplings.

40 minutes in the oven at 180C and the pies were done - browned and tasty on the outside, but what about the filling?

Eating The Inside Out Pie

These pies were really nice - the meat crust was cooked, but still tender; the dumplings inside were soft and fluffy.

As with the All Meat Pie above, the shrinkage of the crust does limit the internal capacity for gravy - so this is best added at the point of serving (so after this picture was taken, I poured some extra gravy on that I had set aside during the preparation.

Pie Experiments (Video)