Blast from the pasty

As originally published in a 6/23/07 edition 

Blast from the pasty

There are times when you need a taste of home, a comfort food that takes you back to your childhood. Many comfort foods are regional, like fried chicken or chicken fried steak in the South. For Yoopers, a good pasty might just be the ultimate in comfort food. A pasty is made of meat and vegetables baked into a thick crust. It’s by no means health food, the crust is made with equal parts lard and shortening, though some use oleo. If you’re a meat and potatoes kind of person, you’ll like the pasty. 

Growing up in the UP, pasties were a staple at family gatherings and trips to my grandparents’ cottage on Beatons Lake. The pasties were either homemade or picked up from one of many local pasty shops. Pasties can be found on the menu of many diners and cafes up north, and the shops that specialize them offer half-baked frozen pasties for people to finish cooking at home. My cooler was purchased on a trip to the UP because I wanted something to transport pasties home in.
The origin of pasties can be traced to Cornwall, England, where it evolved as a meal for Cornish tin miners. The thick crust kept the filling warm, and was carried by the miners as their lunch. Mining was once one of the major industries in the UP, and people from other cultures, particularly Finns, made pasties too. Since I can trace my ancestry back to both Finland and Cornwall, the pasty is part of my heritage. Other cultures have foods similar to pasties, like empanadas, knishes, samosas, panzarottis, and pierogis. The Italian calzone, or pizza pasty, is another favorite of mine.
I made pasties this week for the first time, following a recipe in a cookbook member of my mother’s family compiled more than 20 years ago. My family still gives my oldest aunt, whose recipe it is, grief for the time she made pasties and forgot to wash the parsley - the gritty results had to be trashed and people had to scramble to put together a meal for a hungry mob.
The crust is made first and cutting a cup each of lard and shortening into seven cups of flour is a workout. After the dough was made, I set it aside to chill and began preparing the filling.
Traditionally, pasties are more vegetable than meat, since meat was a luxury. At today’s grocery prices, meat may again become a luxury. I cut three pounds of chuck steak into cubes, then peeled and chopped up five large potatoes and a large onion. Then I washed and minced about a third of a cup of fresh parsley that I grew myself. Salt and pepper were the only seasonings. Some recipes use rutabaga, but I’ve never been a fan. The use of ground beef or carrot is often considered the mark of an inferior pasty.
The pasty recipe said the dough made about eight to 10 crusts. I made nine small balls of dough, rolling each one out to be slightly larger than a pie tin. I added about two cups of filling, then folded over the crust and crimped the edges. I could have taken the time to make smaller pasties, but it was getting late and I wanted to get them in the oven. Some pasty shops make a product that is almost sandwich sized and can be easily picked up and eaten.
Six of the pasties went into the oven for 75 minutes at 375 degrees, and I wrapped up the other three and froze them. The pasties smelled so good as they baked that my son and I opted to split one as soon as I pulled the pans from the oven. Some people like ketchup or a gravy on their pasty, others think that’s a sacrilege. The remaining pasties saved me from having to cook on hot days, as the pasties reheat nicely in the microwave. The best part is my son didn’t complain about eating leftovers and was eager to tuck in to another pasty meal.
The pasties were good, but with room for improvement. They were rather dry, and I’d like to have a flakier crust, with more evenly sliced meat and taters. I may apprentice myself to my aunt and grandmother on my next trip north, as there are always things good cooks do instinctively that they sometimes leave out of the recipe. My mom said she puts a pat of butter inside the crust of her pasties to help the meat and potato juices form a gravy inside as the pasties cook.
If you want to learn more about pasties, Wikipedia has a good entry on them. To order pasties, visit https://ilovepasties.com/. To order them properly on a visit North, remember that it is pronounced “pass-tee.”