The instructions on the pies don’t tell you what to do if they’re frozen so I wrote up how I cooked them. I found these at Columbus Market in the Amish Section.
They’re also offered by Stoltzfus Meats. I went for the beef version. They are priced pretty fairly.
The ingredients are ok. There are some suspect inclusion like the vegetable oils but this is pretty much standard for bread products.
Zook’s Homemade Meat Pies Frozen Cooking Instructions
On the packages, it provides instructions for a thawed pie. Unfortunately, I didn’t thaw them so I just decided to cook them from frozen. So here’s what I did.
Preheat oven to 350 °F
Place pies on bottom racks
Let them cook for 1 hour and 40 mins
Optional for a crispier crust:
Increase oven temperature to 425 °F and let cook for another 10 mins. My oven took about 6 minutes to reach the increased temperature and I included that with the 10 minutes so you’re experience may vary. Keep an eye on your pie during this part. The rack position of your pie will also affect how fast it gets crispy. Top racks crisp faster, so if you’re cooking multiple pies it may be smart to swap the rack positions halfway through cooking if you want them all to be a similar level of crisp.
Here’s what my pies looked like:
The pastry wraps around to the bottom of this pie as well. I kind of don’t like that because it can add a lot of calories with low nutritional value. It tastes pretty good though. It even has some nice color.
The pie that was cooked on the rack above the bottom rack came out a lot crispier as seen here:
Overall I was happy with these pies even cooked from frozen. Sometimes you forget to defrost. They still came out hot and tasty.
I suspect that the Chicken version tastes a bit better though. Gravy and chicken is an awesome combo. Beef just feels like wasted potential. Could’ve cooked it nice and rare instead of throwing it in a pie. I didn’t get the chicken version but here’s what the packaging looks like:
I’d definitely get these again. They’re a great option to have in the fridge for nights you don’t feel like throwing a meal together. But I do think I’ve had a better pie. And that would be the Griggstown Farm pot pie. That one is really good. But I’d be happy with either. Both are good.