Pasty

This is the food of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, full stop — a hand-held meat-and-root-vegetable pie the Cornish copper miners brought over in the 1800s, that the Finns and everyone else adopted so completely it belongs to no one group now. I eat them all over the U.P. (my whole family has an opinion on whose is best), and this is how I make one at home. The thing that makes it a pasty and not a pot pie is the rutabaga — leave it out and you’ve made something else. Fill it raw, crimp it thick, bake it slow, and eat it in your hand. Full story on the Pasties page.

Ingredients

• Crust (makes 6)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup lard (or half lard, half cold butter), cold, cubed

about 3/4 cup ice water

• Filling
• 1 lb beef skirt or chuck, diced small (1/4 in) — not ground
• 1/2 lb pork shoulder, diced small (optional, but traditional here)
• 1 medium rutabaga (swede), diced 1/4 in — the defining vegetable
• 2 medium potatoes, diced 1/4 in
• 1 large onion, diced
• salt and plenty of black pepper

butter, 1 pat per pasty

• To finish
• 1 egg, beaten, for wash

Directions

1. Key ingredients
2. Rutabaga is non-negotiable; diced (not ground) meat is the U.P. norm.
3. Make the crust:
4. Cut the cold lard into the flour and salt until it’s coarse and pea-sized. Add ice water just until it comes together — a lard crust wants to stay cold and barely mixed, so it bakes sturdy enough to hold in your hand without turning to shortbread. Rest it cold at least 30 minutes.
5. Cut the filling small and DON’T pre-cook it:
6. Everything goes in raw. That’s the whole trick of a real pasty — the meat and vegetables steam inside the sealed crust in their own juices, which is why the pieces have to be small and even (1/4 in) so they all cook through in the same hour. Season the mix hard with salt and pepper; it’s a lot of bland root vegetable and it needs it.
7. Build and crimp:
8. Roll each dough ball into a ~9-in round. Pile filling on one half, leaving a border, top with a pat of butter, fold into a D, and crimp the edge into a thick rope — that fat seam is the handle. Cut a small steam vent. Cornwall crimps the side; much of the U.P. crimps the top. Either is right.
9. Bake low and slow:
10. Egg-wash, then bake at 375°F for about 45–55 minutes, until deep golden. Low and slow, because the raw filling needs the full hour to cook through. Rest 10 minutes — the inside is molten.
11. Eat it in your hand. Ketchup or gravy is a genuine U.P. dividing line; I won’t tell you which side I’m on.

Notes

What it is and where it came from The pasty is Cornish in origin — a tin- and copper-miner’s lunch — that came to Michigan’s copper and iron country with the ‘Cousin Jacks’ and was adopted by the Finns and every other immigrant group until it became THE food of the U.P. The famous ‘thick crimp was a disposable handle for arsenic-covered hands’ story is beloved but poorly documented; treat it as folklore, not fact.

Notes from the bench Pronounced PASS-tee (short A). Carrot is a purist flashpoint — many U.P. cooks leave it out; add a little if you like. Diced beats ground here. These freeze beautifully raw or baked, which is exactly how the U.P.’s mail-order pasty trade works. Full history, the condiment war, and the shops I love on the Pasties page.