This recipe for beef and vegetable pasties is one that has been handed down a few generations. Our lovely Linda has kindly shared her Grandma’s recipe so we can spread the word about these yummy bundles of joy!
Upon receiving the recipe and instruction I was surprised by the method for the making of the pastry. But boy oh boy, was it super satisfying to make!
The dough is so pliable, and the end result is literally melt in your mouth softness.
As you follow along, please note that I have made a variation in the method for the filling. You can place all the ingredients into the pastry raw to be cooked in the oven. I wasn’t so confident in my ovens ability to cook through when there are multiple trays cooking at the same time, so pre-cooked my meat and onions.
Recipe for Grandmas Beef and Vegetable Pasties
The Pastry
Ingredients:
2 cups of plain flour
2 cups of self raising flour
2 cups of butter (approximately 450g)
2 cups of boiling water
Method:
1. In a large bowl, combine your flour.
2. Roughly chop your butter and add it in.
3. Add the water and mix thoroughly to ensure there are no lumps of butter remaining.
4. Place in the fridge to cool.
The filling
Ingredients:
1 large potato (approx 350g-400g)
2 medium carrots
1 swede
1 onion
1 piece of pumpkin (same size as potato)
400g mince
Few sprigs of thyme, leaves picked
Salt and Pepper to taste
Method:
1. Chop, mince or blend vegetables. If blending them, do each different vegetable separately as they are different densities and won’t chop evenly.
2. Add the mince and seasoning and mix well, ready to add to the pastry.
3. OPTIONAL: You can pre-cook the ingredients, namely the meat beforehand if you choose. I did this by frying the mince and onion off in a pan, then combined the veggies in with the meat in the pan and gave them some heat too.
Bringing it together
Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees celcius
2. Roll out pastry on a well dusted surface. Cut out circles about the size of a bread and butter plate. If you have a saucepan lid this size with a sharpish edge, that is ideal.
3. Place a heaped tablespoon of mixture on the pastry. Make sure you leave enough gap around the edges to seal it.
4. Brush the edges with milk. Fold over and press firmly.
5. Place on an oven tray and brush lightly with milk.
6. Cook in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for about 20-25 minutes, until golden.
7. Devour (Literal instruction on original recipe, which I took very seriously!)
This recipe produces a large quantity of pasties. I used a teacup platter as my cut out for the pastry, and it produced around two dozen pasties.
Happy cooking, and eating!
