Here’s my mother-in-law’s recipe for Cornish pasties, with my modifications. It works best to make pasties with a team: one person rolling out the dough, the other person filling the pasties.
Crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
a pinch (about 1/8 teaspoon) baking powder
2/3 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco or similar)
1/2 to 2/3 cup cold water
Place dry ingredients into the bowl of a food processor with the standard chopping blade. Add shortening. Pulse food processor until shortening is mixed in, to the consistency of thick cornmeal. Do not over mix! Pour cold water through the chute while pulsing processor, until dough begins to form a ball. Remove dough, divide into two balls, wrap in wax paper and set aside.
Meat filling:
sirloin steak or round steak, about 1 1/2 to 2 #, cut into 1-2 inch cubes (I use sirloin)
1 small onion, cubed
5-8 red-skin potatoes, washed or peeled, and cubed
6-10 large carrots, scraped and cubed
1-2 sticks of regular margarine or butter
salt and pepper
In bowl of food processor with standard chopping blade, pulse the meat and onion until finely chopped. Set aside in large mixing bowl. Repeat with most of the carrots, and most of the potatoes, adding to the meat mixture. Stir the meat mixture with a large spoon. Add more carrots or potatoes until the mixture looks like a good balance of meat to potatoes and carrots.
On counter or table, set up the following work areas:
Dough area: pastry cloth with rolling pin and rolling pin cover; flour, pie dough balls, sharp knife
Filling area: wax paper or cutting board; fork, knife, margarine, salt and pepper, and small spatula
Two-three large cookie sheets covered with parchment paper
With sharp knife, cut each pie crust ball into 6-8 pieces, depending on how big you want the pasties to be. Roll out each piece into a circle; fold in half and pass to the filling area. Do not knead or over-handle dough, or it will become tough and dry.
At filling area, unfold dough. Fill one side of the dough with the meat filling; cut one pat of margarine and place on top of filling; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Fold dough over to form a half-moon shaped pie. Fold up crust edge against the pasty. (You can trim excess dough with a pizza cutter if there is too much, but I don’t). Poke 6 times with fork; use spatula to transfer to cookie sheet.
Bake pasties at 350 degrees farenheit, for about 60 minutes. Crust should be lightly browned. Makes 12-15 pasties. Enjoy!
© Huffygirl 2011
Looks great! I will have to try these – I’ve made pasties once before and we enjoyed them. I like the idea of using a nice old family recipe.
Let me know how they turn out. If I get a couple readers trying the recipe, maybe I can do another post with yours and other’s photos.
Yum…………these do look good! Thanks for sharing the recipe.
Send some pictures if you try them and I’ll post them! Or, you could put them on your blog too!
Looks yummy. I sent your Part 1 post to my friend in England. He’s going to get his mum’s recipe. Can’t wait to try this.
If you try it take pictures and I’ll post a follow-up for anyone who sends me their pasty story or pictures. Or you may just want to put them on your own blog.