We Pierateers of pie review website www.pierate.co.uk are today celebrating our 9th Birthday, and we'd love you to join us by simply eating a pie and rating it!

Our ninth birthday pie from Turner's Pies!

It follows in the footsteps of the very first International Pierate Day in 2013, which has been celebrated on 12th November every year since! But we don’t want you – pie lovers worldwide – to just sit at home and watch as we eat all the pies! Oh no! Pie eating and pie rating is something we can all enjoy. Something that can bring friends, family and communities together. Pies are celebrated and eaten in so many countries worldwide and so today – marking our ninth birthday – we would love you to join us in eating and rating pies this week to celebrate!

This year our main highlight was the birthday pie night we had, to celebrate with a number of friends of the blog, where we finally got to pie rate the British Pie Awards 2018 winners Turner's Pies! We rated their Steak and Ale pie recently, which was the pie that won the British Pie Awards this year, and will be writing up our reviews of some of their other pie flavours soon!

Our pie eating friends enjoyed using the illustrated guide below on how to rate a pie, based on our 7 Cs of pie rating, which we commissioned fellow food blogger and amazing illustrator Emily from www.recipesandreviews.co.uk to create for us for our 6th birthday! And in a slightly surreal moment, people spontaneously started singing hap-pie birthday to our pie blog when they saw the pie with the "9" candle in (pictured above!) Possibly the first time anyone has ever sung happy birthday to a pie blog before!!

An illustrated guide on how to rate a pie by @emily_etc

So here’s the deal... in six simple words: Eat a pie and rate it!

It doesn’t matter whether it’s savoury or sweet, or whether you prefer your pies without the wheat or meat! We really do rate anything and everything that is a true pie and sometimes a number of interesting things that try to be pies to! But the important thing is we love to eat pie and rate it – for we are, after all, the Pierateers!

So once you’ve found a pie to eat – whether in the local bakery, butchers, supermarket or your favourite pie shop or one you have made in the luxury of your own home – why not rate your pie using the Seven Cs of pie rating in our lovely illustrated guide above?

So what do you need to do now?

Well, first things first - you need a pie (or two!) For insPIEration you might find our Pie Rankings helpful, with over 650 pies we've rated and reviewed over the past 9 years! Or perhaps you want to make one of the pies our Ship's Cook has made, following her reci-pies here.

You can even watch us on the BBC website advising what to look for in a pie!

Most of all, we hope you enjoy eating and rating pies this week! We sure will and will be posting about more of the pies we ate for our birthday Pie Night this week!!!

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Celebrating our 9th birthday with a Turner's Pie or two!!

Turner's Pies Steak and Ale Pie Review

You may recall that back in March of this year the British Pie Awards Supreme Champion 2018 was none other than Turner's Pies, who had done very well previously and even been sold in Harrods food market, but had never previously scooped the big prize! Well as with all the pie winners since we started helping at the British Pie Awards in 2014, we wanted to get our hands on the Supreme Champion, and what better place to pie rate it that at the birthday pie-rty to celebrate our 9th anniversary?!

The company are a traditional bakers based down on the South coast in West Sussex. Starting out making pies for a hotel in Bognor Regis in 1933, Turner's Pies have a long history down three generations as a family run business and it is great to see they have expanded in recent years to having a pie shop in Bognor Regis, Rustington, Chichester and now Worthing too! But having won the British Pie Awards back in March 2018, perhaps the most exciting addition is the availability to now order their pies online, with their "Pies by Post" service!

The "Pies by Post" service really is as simple and obvious as it sounds, with orders placed on their website getting delivered by courier a few days after ordering. Simple really! And there are a selection of pie boxes you can get delivered too, with free delivery on your first order, so what are you waiting for?! Ah yes - why not read our review below first of the Steak and Ale pie!!!

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If you missed it, here's the tweet they sent out when they won the British Pie Awards back in March!

🏆‼️ WE DID IT ‼️🏆

Absolutely honoured to be named the SUPREME CHAMPION 2018 at this years #britishpieawards #BritishPieWeek

Our Steak & Ale Pie overcame stiff competition from 963 other pies to be crowned #1 In the UK.

More news to follow soon...MR T@BritishPies pic.twitter.com/0yTfZvMDUJ

— Award Winning Pies (@TurnersPies) March 10, 2018

And after their win, Turner's Pies immediately set their eyes on another award - this time becoming the number 1 pie on Pierate!

Thanks guys, we were waiting for the official press release before we told the world but it seems that’s not coming today. We’re chuffed! Only accolade we need now is no1 pierated!!

— Award Winning Pies (@TurnersPies) March 9, 2018

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Turner's Steak and Ale Pie

So onto the pie review itself! The pastry was golden on top, slightly more pale on the sides, but it held together well even when cut in half. It was crisp on the outside and slightly gooey on the inside, a real art form in pastry circles! While the pastry did crumble a bit upon cutting, the fact you could enjoy the pastry so much even on its own was a great testament to this pie, even if there was no need to do so with such a meaty filling to the pie itself! And when cut into halves, you could still pick up this pie, which is a good sign of a firm, well baked pastry.

A cut-through of the Turner's Steak and Ale Pie

The pie was well filled, with a good capacity of meaty chunks. Overall they were generally very nice, even if a few pieces in several of the pies were a little chewy. The filling was moist but could have had a little more gravy in it, but the ale gravy was a nice compliment to the meaty pieces. At £3.50 per pie this was about the price I would be happy to pay for this sized pie if it was well filled and flavoursome, as this pie was.

Overall, I can certainly see why the Turner's Pies Steak and Ale got a glowing report from the British Pie Awards, and it comfortably enters our "Pierate Highly Recommended" category! I look forward to rating some more of their pies soon!

Turner's Pies Steak and Ale Pie
Score: 6.39/7
[Colour 6.5, Capacity 6.5, Consistency 6.5, Condition 6.5, Chewiness 6.25, Cheapness 6, Content 6.5]
RAS and SJL

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