The Pasty

*Slight edit.

The Upper Peninsula is well known for the pasty. Most, if not all, of you reading this will automatically pronounce 'pasty' as 'pace-tee.' (Such as what strippers use.) WRONG! The correct pronunciation for 'pasty' here in the UP is 'pass-tee.' And we are talking about food here, people.

The pasty is, as best as can be described, an individual meat pie. And it looks like this:


Cornish miners brought the pasty here to the UP. Pasties were easy for the miners to bring for lunch, so many other miners adopted this food, too. No other ethnic group took to the pasty quite like the Finns did. Eventually, most people thought it was the Finns who brought this delicacy to the region. There still are many who would argue about the origin of the pasty and insist it was a Finnish dish.

A pasty consists of potatoes, rutabagas, onions, salt, pepper, and round steak mixed together and baked inside a pastry. When I make my own, I always add carrots to the mix and usually use a very good grade of ground beef instead of steak. Most people eat pasties with ketchup. *It is perfectly acceptable to eat them without ketchup, too--K eats them without most of the time--but I just can't understand why! :)* Some people put gravy on their pasties--a practice which most Yoopers find a little disgusting. While pasties are not hard to make, they are time consuming. This is why I don't make my own--we have a little shop here that makes excellent ones and I get from there when I need to cure a pasty craving. For those who would like to try, the recipe for pasties follows. And they ARE worth the effort.

Pasties (about 4 or 5)

1 lb. round steak--diced
1 cup potatoes--peeled and diced
1 cup rutabagas--peeled and diced
1 onion--chopped fine
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
enough pastry dough for a double-crust pie
(ALL ingredients can be adjusted for individual tastes. I NEVER use a recipe--I just peel veggies till the mix 'looks right.' :))

Mix first 6 ingredients together well. Divide dough into 5 pieces. (Depending on how many pasties you want to make, you can divide the dough into more or less pieces.) Roll one piece of dough into a circle--much like you would do for a pie crust. Place a heaping amount of meat mixture on one half of the dough. (If meat has very little fat, put 2 T. butter on top of mixture. Otherwise, the pasty will be too dry.) Fold the other half of the dough over the top of the meat mixture and seal the edge. *Cut a small 'air hole' in the pastry so steam can vent out.* Place on jelly-roll pan. Continue doing the same with the rest of the dough and meat mix. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until the vegetables are cooked through. Pasties can be served hot or cold.

As I said, you can make pasties as big or small as you want. Some pasty shops in the area make teeny tiny ones--about three or four bite sized--as party food. Pasties are quite filling, so I usually don't make them overly large--but it is an individual preference.