Michigan Cornish Pasty

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Ingredients:

  • 1 lb lean beef round, cut into small dice
  • 1 large russet potato, chopped into small dice
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 teaspoon salt & 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
  • 1 beaten egg

 

To make the pastry:

  • 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 3 oz cold butter, cut into bits
  • 4 oz cold lard (or vegetable shortening), cut into bits
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 6 tablespoons cold water

In food processor, combine flour and salt.  Add butter and lard (or shortening) and process until consistency of sand.  Add cold water and process just until dough gathers into a ball.

Divide into half.  Wrap as a flattened disk and refrigerate 30 minutes.

You can substitute 1 package of pie pastry from dairy section of grocery store.

To assemble the pasties:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line cookie sheet with parchment or silicon sheet.

Mix the beef, potatoes and onion with seasonings in large mixing bowl.

Lightly flour work surface.  Roll out 1/2 of the dough into a round.  Mound 1/4 of the meat mixture in the center.  Moisten the edges of the round with a damp pastry brush, or wet finger.  Pull up pastry to the middle to form a half moon shape and pinch or crimp edges together.  Traditionally, the crimped edge is pretty thick as this is used as a handle with which to eat the meat pie.  Or an easier method would be to fold over dough to form a half moon shape lying flat and crimp the edge with a fork. Repeat with remaining dough and ingredients.  Place all on baking sheet as you are making them.

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Brush outside surface with beaten egg.  Poke vent hole in top if making the flat version, or on both sides if making the traditional version.

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Bake in 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

Serve hot with ketchup or at room temperature.

Very freezeable.

 

One thought on “Michigan Cornish Pasty

  1. My mother was raised in the UP of Michigan, in an orphanage called the Good Will Farm in Houghton but that is another story….and pasties were a staple in my childhood. Real pasties (we would have never called them Cornish, and we always used the plural, never the singular ‘pasty’, after all, you can’t make just one!) are made like your recipe above, but when times got hard, ground beef was substituted for real beef or carrots when meat wasn’t in the grocery budget. They were very versatile and great cold; miners who worked the copper and iron ore mines in the UP would take them in their lunches, they never seemed to last for me to take them to school in my lunch box though. We always ate them with ketchup to…this is a great recipe. Thanks for sharing it! How come you haven’t posted a photo of yourself?? Seems like LCHS was just a week or two ago. It was great to hear a little bit about what you have been doing since then. Bob

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