Amy's Pasties

This recipe is handed down from my great-grandmother, Baba. It’s based on a Butte, Montana recipe, which used top round steak and cubed potatoes, butter and salt.

This recipe been modified for flavor and vegetarian/vegan preferences, somewhat based on a pasty we had in Silver City, NM (also a mining town) at the Tranquilbuzz Coffee Shop in 2023, that used a lot of herbs. I also started slicing the potatoes and turnips into thin rounds rather than cubing them after seeing this done on a special on PBS on pasties in Michigan’s Northern peninsula. There used to be pasty shops in Butte and Missoula both, but these days they seem to be harder to find. If you find a great filling alternative, I’d love to hear about it!

Serves 6.

Original recipe by Amy Vandling.

Ingredients

2 cups flour
½ cup butter or vegan butter
½ cup vegetable shortening
½ cup cold water
2 turnips, sliced thinly, sectioned into thirds
3 russet potatoes, peeled, sliced thinly, sectioned into thirds
1 tablespoon rosemary
2 teaspoons thyme
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Make the dough
1. combine flour, butter, shortening into food processor. Pulse until it resembles sand. Very slowly, while the food processor is running, add cold water until the dough forms a ball. Stop adding water when it forms a ball: you probably will not use all of the water!
2. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate while you make the filling.
In a medium sized pot bring enough water to a boil to cover the potatoes and turnips. Boil until barely tender (can barely pierce with a fork). Drain.
Make the filling
1. In a skillet, warm vegetable oil over medium heat.
2. Add thyme and rosemary and sautee for 1 minute or so.
3. Add potatoes and turnips, and sautee over low to medium heat for 5 minutes (enough time to absorb the herby oil, but not so long as to fall apart into mush).
Assemble the pasties
1. Take a large golfball sized ball of dough and flatten with the bottom of a bowl.
2. Roll with rolling pin into round thin sheet (you’ll have to decide how thick you want the crust- my suspicion is that I make much thinner crust than you’d want - for instance - to take with you into the mine for lunch, but I eat mine with a fork…).
3. Place a large spoonful of potato/turnip filling into the center, then pick up one side of the round dough sheet and wrap the filling, matching edges with the other side of the dough sheet.
4. Pinch the edges together, then place the formed pasty onto a baking sheet.
5. Repeat the process until you’ve used up the dough and filling.
Bake pasties at 400 deg for 10 minutes
Lower the heat to 350 deg and bake for another 30-45 min.
Remove from the oven and let cool.

If you search for pasty recipes, you’ll find discussions on turnips vs. rutabagas, but where we live, we usually only find turnips. I think it gives the pasties a brighter, slighty horseradishy flavor. The Butte pasties wouldn’t have had any of that though: it seems to have been pretty meat-and-potatoes, and that’s it.

Some recipes have you brush egg on the crust right before baking, which results in a shiny crust that won’t fall apart as easily when you eat it. Some just have you top with a pat of butter. I don’t do either here!

Use your favorite herbs, try cubing the filling—who cares what the purists think—but just remember, most people eat these with ketchup!

Pasty Mythology

There’s great mythology out there about who invented the pasties.

One website says Irish Catholic priests invented them. There’s debate about whether the Finnish co-opted them as their own. I think that’s a dumb discussion: Irish Catholics can’t claim to have the only savory hand pie (hello, pierogis and empanadas).

Rumor also has it that miners liked them because they were able to use the thicker crust as an uneaten handle for their filthy hands.