Brit chefs concoct world's biggest meat pie

April 14, 1998
Web posted at: 4:12 p.m. EDT (2012 GMT)

From Correspondent Sanjay Singh

CLEVEDON, England (CNN) -- A group of enterprising chefs in Britain have set the world record for the biggest-ever meat pie. Things didn't go exactly as planned, however.

It all started under a giant canopy at a football club in the town of Clevedon, near Bristol. A team of 17 British chefs had meat pie on their minds -- or to be more precise, steak and kidney pie.

These chefs weren't simply firing up the stoves to fix themselves a snack. Their mission was to cook a more than 10 ton pie.

As CNN's Sanjay Singh found out, the creation of the world's biggest meat pie didn't go off exactly as planned

Their reason was two-fold: They wanted to beat a U.S.-held record for the largest-ever chicken pie and promote British beef, which got its image tarnished during the mad cow scandal.

"We were talking of ways in which we could promote British beef and the idea of doing a giant steak and kidney pie from an award-winning recipe was really at the top of the agenda," said Derek Andrews, a British meat promoter.

But first, the ingredients had to be assembled, including 4 and a half tons of beef, 16,000 liters of beer and huge quantities of kidneys, onions, mushrooms and ketchup.

To accommodate the tremendous amount of ingredients, the chefs also had to have one of the world's biggest cooking pans specially built.

It was when the 10 x 2 meter pan began to fill up that the cooks realized something wasn't right. The huge quantities of British beef had been left locked in a truck at below freezing temperatures, leaving it frozen solid.

Waiting for the meat to thaw put the cooking time back several hours. But in the end, their effort to make the biggest ever meat pie triumphed.

There was just one more snag: The pie took so long to bake that the cooks had to abandon their original plan to sell portions of it for charity.

---

 

---

Sound off on our message boards & chat

© 1998 Cable News Network, Inc.
A Time Warner Company
All Rights Reserved.

Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.