Britain and Ireland · Volume 37, South Asian and Caribbean Britain
Jamaican Beef Patty
Britain
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour 30
- Researched
- 4 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
The popular Cornish pasty lineage is repeated everywhere and traceable nowhere credible; this chapter names the claim and does not assert it.
As tradition built it
Makes 8. About 1.5 hours.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain flour
- 2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp salt
- 250 g cold butter, cubed
- 150 ml ice water
- 500 g minced beef
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 scotch bonnet, finely chopped
- 2 tsp curry powder
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
- 200 ml beef stock
- as needed vegetable oil
- 1 egg, beaten, to glaze
Method
- Rub the butter into the flour, turmeric and salt until it resembles coarse crumbs, keeping some pea-sized pieces of butter intact.
- Bring together with the ice water to a firm dough, wrap, and chill 30 minutes.
- Fry the onion, garlic and scotch bonnet in oil until soft, 4 to 5 minutes.
- Add the beef, and brown thoroughly, 8 to 10 minutes.
- Stir in the curry powder and thyme, and cook 1 minute.
- Add the stock, and simmer 10 to 15 minutes, until the liquid has mostly reduced.
- Stir in the breadcrumbs to bind, and cool completely.
- Roll the pastry, and cut into eight circles, filling one half of each with the cooled beef mixture, folding over and crimping the edge firmly.
- Brush with beaten egg, and bake at 200°C for 25 to 30 minutes, until deep golden and firm.
What a modern chef changes
The lamination taken seriously, the way any serious pastry demands.
Rung 6.
Method
- Laminate the pastry properly, folding the butter through in three distinct turns with a chill between each, rather than simply rubbing it in once, building real, visible layers that flake rather than crumble.
- Cool the filling fully, ideally overnight in the fridge, before it ever touches the pastry, since a warm filling is the single most common reason a home-made patty's pastry turns soggy rather than crisp.
- Chill the assembled, uncooked patties for 20 minutes before baking, resetting the butter in the dough so it produces steam and lift in the oven rather than melting out before the structure has set.