Paddy Pie, a beef, Irish stout and mustard mash take on a traditional cottage pie, has won the €100,000 Taste of Success challenge for Michele Kilkenny from Galway.
The competition formed the basis of an eight-part TV series, the final of which was screened on RTÉ One on Tuesday night.
The winning entry, renamed Chef Select Irish Beef Brisket Pie, will go on sale in Lidl’s 149 Irish stores on Wednesday morning and will cost €2.79.
Kilkenny, a professional chef, runs her own food truck which sells not pies, but boxty, at food markets in Galway. Originally from Surrey, she came to live in Ireland from the UK when she was 13.
In the final of the competition, which was filmed over the summer and went through a series of regional roadshows and knockout rounds, Kilkenny's meat pie saw off the challenge of a white chocolate, pecan and banana bread loaf, created by James Kavanagh and William Murray.
Mentors
Kilkenny was mentored by chef JP McMahon, who was scoring a second consecutive success in the competition, once again relegating food entrepreneur Domini Kemp.
The other mentors for the series, whose protégés failed to make the final round of judging, were model Roz Purcell and caterer Eunice Power. The show was presented by Dáithi Ó Sé.
The winner said: “It all seems like a dream and hasn’t sunk in yet. It’s such a life changing experience and I can’t wait to finally do all the things I’ve always wanted to do or have put off. It’s like someone has lifted a huge weight off me. That feeling is priceless.”
Kilkenny was confident from the outset that her pie would prevail, saying on her first appearance on the programme that she had a “100 per cent” chance of winning.
Lidl Ireland commercial director Liam Casey said: "Right from the start we knew the Paddy Pie had potential to sit under our existing Chef Select brand. We definitely feel that the Chef Select Irish Beef Brisket Pie is something that will appeal to our customers as it is a very homely dish with lots of warming ingredients."
The pies are being made for Lidl by Emaan Foods in Tallaght, Dublin.
