An authentic Michigan food, the original Cornish beef pasty was brought to the Michigan Upper Peninsula by the English copper miners of the 1840s from their native Cornwall. The miners would place the pasty on top of their shovel and warmed it over the headlamps deep in the copper mine. This versatile meat pie can have a million variations, but we like to stick with the original beef pasty recipe from Michigan Tech.
Why Michigan Loves the Beef Pasty
Michigan has a strong cultural connection to the beef pasty, a pastry filled with beef and vegetables. The beef pasty became a popular and economical food for miners in the Upper Peninsula, and its popularity has continued to this day. Additionally, many local restaurants and bakeries in Michigan specialize in making beef pasties, which contributes to the dish’s cultural significance in the state.
Over 180 years later, this once ethnic dish is baked every day to create this authentic Michigan food. The Beef Pasty is a flaky crust with meat and veggies inside to keep you warm. They contain a hearty variety of beef, pork, potatoes, rutabaga, and carrots in a flaky crust.
Once prepared, these tender, flaky pasties can be warmed in the oven for just a few minutes to truly enjoy the taste of Michigan.
You can make authentic Cornish Beef Pasties in your home kitchen. The recipe is arranged by the relative proportion of each ingredient – a good shortcut of time, especially when using store-bought pie crust. In addition, we’ve included shortcuts that use pre-made pie dough or even commercial puff pastry (although you do lose the flavor).
Michigan Technological University was first established as a mining college in Houghton, Michigan. Their recipe for pasties is considered authentic genuine, and straightforward recipe passed down locally from the Cornwell miners to their college kitchens.
If you’re a student at Michigan Tech, you can expect to see the Pasty in your freshman dorm cafe.
Michigan Tech Dining Services Famous Pasty Recipe
This recipe makes ten pasties. Put about 12 oz of filling in each crust.
Dough: 3 1/2 flour 9 oz. shortening 10 oz. cold water 1Tbl + 1 tsp salt
Filling: 3 1/2# potatoes, peeled 1 1/2# coarse ground pork 12 oz coarse ground beef 9 oz diced onions 8 oz diced carrots 7 oz diced rutabaga 1/4# butter 1Tbl salt 1Tbl pepper
Preparation of the Original Beef Pasty
Chop the carrots and onions. Dice the potatoes and rutabagas in 3/8-inch dice. Mix all the filling ingredients and set them aside. Mix the flour and salt. Cut in the shortening for pie crust. Add the water and mix gently until the dry particles are absorbed; do not over mix.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. On a floured surface, roll 4-ounce balls of dough into circles about the size of a dinner plate. Put about 12 ounces of filling on one half. Dampen the edges, fold the crust over the filling, and seal. Place on greased baking sheets (or use baking paper). Place in oven and bake for one hour. Serve with either catsup or gravy.
Variations of the Original Pasty Recipe
You can fill the pasty with many different variations of ingredants. The original Cornish pasty can include other meat such as lamb, chicken or even rabbit! What ever you have on hand. Turnips and parships can be a substitute for rutabega and potato. You can experiment with cut fruit, fruit preserves and jams.
What to Serve With a Beef Pasty
The entire purpose of a beef pasty was that it was a complete meal all to itself. However there is an ongoing debate on what you can put on top of an original beef pasty if you are not deep in a mine in Northern Michigan. The two most favored toppings on a beef pasty is gravy or ketchup. Gravy can be made of the drippings from the cooked ground beef and pork.
The Michigan Beef Pasty has been identified as one of the 10 Hometown Foods That Scream You’re From Michigan. While we love the original recipe from MTU its obvious that there are a million ways to make this tasty meat pie and we want to try them all. From Presque Isle Park in Marquette to Detroit there are great shops that make this tasty treat.
Pasties were the original fast food of copper miners and lumberjacks. Brought here from the mining region of Cornwell, England, U.P. wives would fill the rolled-out dough with leftover beef, potato, onion and rutabaga, fold the pastry in half, seal the edges and bake.
In Michigan, where 19th-century Cornish immigrants brought the pasty into the iron mines of the Upper Peninsula, the pasty has been celebrated with local festivals and statewide proclamations. The Cornish pasty descends from a broader family of medieval English meat pies.
Pasties date back as far as the 13th century, at which time they were devoured by the rich upper classes and royalty. The fillings were varied and indulgent, often containing venison, beef, lamb and seafood like eels, flavoured with rich gravies and fruits.
It's A Portable Pie With History Baked In. Miners favored the pasty due to its portable nature — a small meat pie that could easily be carried into the mines for 12-hour workdays.
If you're from the UP, chances are you've had more than your fair share of pasties. For the uninitiated, Yooper pasties trace their roots back to Cornish miners that migrated to the Upper Peninsula to work in the copper mines located in the Western Upper Peninsula.
Pasty. Pass-tee. Not “pace-tee,” the citizens of Michigan's Upper Peninsula are quick to point out. Beef, potatoes, onions, and turnips baked into a crispy golden crust—sound it out, and you've got something that sounds delicious.
Lehto's Pasties was started in 1947 by Mr. Lehto after he served in WWII and was honorably discharged from the army in 1946. It is one of the Original Famous Pasty Shops located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Lehto's is still family owned and operated to this very day by their niece Laurie and her husband Bill Walker.
This belief is thought to have been started by the Cornish tin mining families who didn't want their ingenious pasty invention to be adopted by the fishing trade.
The Cornish Pasty originates from Cornwall (Southwest England) and can be traced back as far as the 1200's. Mining was once a thriving industry in Cornwall and at that time pasties were baked by the wives and mothers of the tin miners.
The English word "pasty" derives from Medieval French (O.Fr.paste from V.Lat pasta) for a pie, filled with venison, salmon or other meat, vegetables or cheese, baked without a dish. Pasties have been mentioned in cookbooks throughout the ages.
There was a pretty large number of Cornish miners who came to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. They brought their pasty recipes with them. Likely the Finns adopted this tasty and filling meal from the Cornish. Here is what I am surmising about this.
These Cornish Pasties are filled with a mixture of well-seasoned steak, onions, potatoes and swede (or rutabaga/yellow turnip if you're in the US). The meat and vegetables are placed in the pastry raw, with a really good pinch of salt and pepper and a few dots of butter, then sealed and cooked in the pastry.
In Middle English, paste developed on the one hand into pasty and on the other hand into pastry. On both sides of the Atlantic, pastry now refers either to dough or baked sweet food made with the dough, while pasty, in British usage at least, refers to a small pastry case with a savory filling.
There will always be great debate about the origin of the pasty, but one easy way to detect the Devon pasty from the Cornish is that the Devon pasty has a top-crimp and is oval in shape, whereas the Cornish pasty is semi-circular and side-crimped along the curve.
In southwest Wisconsin—mining country—pasties were really popular as an easy, portable, delicious, nutritious lunch for miners. They were usually made with ground beef, boiled potatoes, and onions stuffed in a pastry. They were baked and could be eaten cold. This made for a hearty yet portable meal for the miners.
Pasties are savory, handheld pies that originated in Cornwall, England. They were popular with miners throughout the 19th and 20th centuries all over the United States, including here in Utah. They consist of a flaky pastry crust and are filled with meat, vegetables, and seasonings.
The traditional Cornish pasty, which since 2011 has had Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in Europe, is filled with beef, sliced or diced potato, swede (also known as yellow turnip or rutabaga – referred to in Cornwall and other parts of the West Country as turnip) and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper, ...
Pasties are traditional meat pies hailing from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan! These are made with rutabaga so they're the real deal. Rub pasties with a little milk before baking if you want them to have a golden color.
Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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