Cheeseburger hand pies are what happens when you cross a juicy cheeseburger with a croissant. AMAZING.
Cheeseburger Hand Pies are Perfect for Picky Eaters
Also, if you’ve got picky eaters cheeseburger hand pies are for you. One of the (bazillion) lessons I’ve learned about feeding my tribe is about spin-offs. Keep your eyes open for flavors and ingredients the kids like, and make those things again. Differently.
Well, it turns out that a big part of teaching kids to love food, to be adventurous eaters who know how to nourish themselves and enjoy a meal with others, is introducing more variety. It’s also good for hitting more of those vitamins and minerals kids need throughout the week. (Don’t worry about every day, my pediatrician says. Focus on the week as a whole.)
That’s where these cheeseburger hand pies come in. With layers of puff pastry, dinner is hardly “healthy” or even entirely homemade. But the point is offering a familiar set of ingredients–ground beef, cheddar cheese, even ketchup and mustard–in a new way. It’s New Food practice. A low-stakes opportunity to broaden those sometimes stubborn horizons.
And it was Martha Stewart’s idea.
Cheeseburger Hand Pies are 2 Dinners in 1
As always, we’ve modified our take on cheeseburger hand pies and also made it part of a 2-in-1 Dinner. Prep the ground beef base, then use it for both this meal AND a Sweet Potato Cottage Pie later in the week. My kids ate both and I hope yours will too.
how to make cheeseburger hand pies
Start with an onion. Always start with an onion if you want a lot of flavor, and I’ve found that instead of watering down the flavors in a dish, my kids actually enjoy it more with the full amount of seasoning. Dice it finely if you’ll be dining with people who say things like, “Onions? But I don’t LIKE onions!” Or shred it.
Also, get your pastry out the moment you decide to make this recipe. It takes 40 minutes to thaw out, which is typically the amount of time I spend on making the whole meal, if that. So be warned. The pastry needs to be thawing ASAP.
Brown the meat and add all those flavors, the same ones you use for that Sweet Potato Cottage Pie: Worcestershire sauce, thyme, salt, pepper and tomato paste. Add your broth. Simmer. Reduce. Then comes the slathering. Today we’re saying it with mustard.
Load up each square, on one half.
Use your finger to dab a bit of water along the entire edge of the square. Then STRETCH your pastry over the top. (Alternatively, roll out your dough in the first place. You won’t need to stretch it.) Crimp the edges with a fork.
Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet.
Enjoy.
No-cook sides to go with:
- Carrot Contest with 3 Dipping Sauces
- Kid-friendly crudite (personal veggie cups with a pool of dip at the bottom)
cheeseburger hand pies
Double the ground beef mixture (all ingredients except the cheese, mustard and puff pastry) to make a 2-in-1 Dinner. The same base makes our Sweet Potato Cottage Pie. OR if you’ve already prepared a batch of ground beef, skip down to the puff pastry part below.
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Total Time: 35 mins
- Yield: 8 pies 1x
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium sweet onion, finely diced or shredded
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 2 tablespoons of tomato paste (use ketchup in a pinch)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- ½ teaspoon thyme
- 1/2 can beef stock or broth (14.5 ounce can)
- 1 package frozen puff pastry, thawed
- 1/2–3/4 cup extra sharp cheddar cheese, diced or shredded
- 3 tablespoons mustard (any kind)
- Small bowl of water
Instructions
- Set your oven to 400 degrees. If you haven’t yet, pull out the puff pastry and set it on the counter to thaw.
- In a large skillet cook the onions in oil for about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook about 2 minutes. Add ground beef and brown, about 8 minutes. Combine Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, salt, pepper, thyme AND stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes until the sauce reduces. It should be very thick. If not, keep boiling.
- Roll out your pastry dough on a floured surface and cut each piece into 4 squares. My package had 2 pieces and I made 8 squares. Slather each square with mustard. Then fill each square halfway with the ground beef mixture. Sprinkle the cheddar cheese on top. Dip your finger in the bowl of water and make a line all the way around each square, then STRETCH the pastry over the top, delicately. Crimp the edges with a fork.
- Bake on a parchment lined sheet at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes. If you’re doing 2 pans, rotate them halfway through.
More 2-in-1 dinners kids love
This is a 2-in-1 Dinner! Double your ground beef mixture to have a base for Sweet Potato Cottage Pie later in the week.
And for dessert…
- Super Simple Chocolate Rice Pudding
- 4-Ingredient Rainbow Meringues
- Easy Cobbler with Frozen Blueberries
- 1-Bowl Chocolate Cake
Ciao bella —
Our picky kids love these…pretty much anything stuffed into puff pastry gets them running to the dinner table. Their favorite is lentil stew inside, which they make themselves (they spoon the lentil stew onto the pastry dough, fold, score, then “paint” with egg). Zoe calls them “lentil puffs” and asks for them weekly. We do red lentils cooked with carrots, celery, onion, wine, salt and pureed just a touch. They go crazy with the puff pastry – Max likes to experiment putting random food inside to see how it tastes (cheese or jam, once a raw carrot!) In fact, I’m making Bolognese meat sauce tonight with the idea of stuffing leftover into pastry puffs for lunch over the weekend…!
Miss you! Baci to the wee ones xo
Amy, I just said “ooooh!” out loud. Alone at my computer. (Kiddies are napping.) All of those ideas sound amazing (minus the carrot). Totally love the Bolognese sauce filling idea. Could you share your recipe?
And what a cute idea to get picky guys into the action by making their own. You know, we skipped the egg wash and they were still delish.
So fun to hear from you! THANK YOU for this gem.
Made these last night and everyone ate them. Kaylee ate one before heading to the boyfriends house for dinner, and Courtney ate two. Both of these things are extraordinarily rare. Courtney (who had her nose in a book the entire evening) suggested I “buy” these again. She had completely missed the cooking process. Only thing I changed was leaving the mustard out completely.
Thanks for another winner!
Yahoo! You should totally buy those again. 😉
BTW, my two-year-old, George, is on the other side of things. He thanks me for making everything. Dinner, “this video”, “my shoes”…
Hi Charity! I’ve been admiring your website for a long time and this is the first recipe I have tried. It was a HUGE hit!! My kids both like a variety of foods but they tend not to like the same foods – I can almost guarantee that every meal will produce one happy and one unhappy kid customer! This was the first time in a very long time that we had enthusiastic approvals from everyone – and actually got requests (from both kids!) to make it again tonight for the 2nd consecutive night! I honestly don’t think that’s ever happened. We made your oven-roasted broccoli recipe to go with it. My 4-year old son who loves to cook helped with every step and my 6-year old thanked him for dinner afterward 🙂 Thank you for an awesome recipe! I’ll look forward to trying more!
What a great story to hear! Thanks so much for letting me know, Ilana. I’ll have to add this one to our list of dinners this week — it’s such a quick and easy one and a perfect break from all the Thanksgiving-y dishes to come. (Maybe I’ll add it to our new newsletter too. Each week I’m rounding up 3 quick links to the biggest recipe hits of the week, according to my kids and all of those who I hear from too! Sign up for it at the top of each page.) Thanks again!
This was ean easy sale for my kids– meat and a bread– but I didn’t expect Caleb to say ‘yea, onions!’ So, he’s finally come around! Four thumbs up and everyone said the meet was yummy. I’m looking forward to the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
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Do you combine the paste / stock / sauce in the pan with the meat? Or a separate pan and let it thicken and then add it later? You didn’t specify..
This entree was scrumptious & the recipe was easy to follow. It was a big hit. I’ll absolutely make this again!!!
Made this for the first time last night per recipe ingredients and measurements except I brushed tops with egg yolk wash to ensure golden brown coloring. This is typical for baking with puff pastry. Also, served brown mustard on side rather than inside pocket. In my experience baking mustard tends to become too paste-like and looses it’s original flavor and texture.
Comments from family were positive and voted for adding it to rotation with this modification: meat mix too salty (due to Worcestershire sauce AND full teaspoon salt) so will eliminate salt rather than reducing W. sauce (side note – my husband enjoys flavor of W. sauce so would rather keep that)