Pasties "Cook Up" Quantities!

Jumbo Pasties

Making pasties is time consuming and a little bit fiddly, so to make the most of it I make them to a couple of 'rules'... a) They must be made in a LARGE quantity... enough for at least 2 meals, preferably 3 (they're great for freezing) and b) I must have other tasks I can do in the kitchen at the same time... passing them through the oven takes a few hours so I either need to be cooking other non time sensitive things, be doing a deep clean in the kitchen or be able to work on the laptop.

I made the equivalent of 20 small pasties on Monday

Ingredients:
10 sheets of butter puff pastry (you may prefer to make your own pastry and you may prefer short crust too)
1.6kg rump steak
3 small/medium potatoes, peeled and diced
800g carrots peeled and diced
2 medium-large onions
Peas - enough to 'look right'. Probably close to 2 cups
Celtic sea salt to taste
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Condensed beef broth (Massel beef stock powder could be used)
Flour as needed, 1-2 dessert spoons
I often put in a table spoon or two of tomato paste too, but forgot this time!

Tips:

• Many hands make light work, so do electric ones!
• Someone small can peel the carrots & potatoes
• Someone bigger can dice them or put them through on a chopping setting in the food processor
• Steak is easier to dice when almost totally frozen, freeze in single layers though as once it's frozen together, it's too hard to separate before defrosted. If you don't want to work with it mostly frozen then a great pair of kitchen scissors can make sort work of it too - my personal favourite are the Tupperware scissors
• Don't try for a typical Pastie shape, just work with the shape of the pastry. I ROLL nothing! Jumbo pasties are one whole sheet of pastry and small pasties are half a sheet. Then I also make mini ones and medium ones from one sheet - 1/3 for the mini leaving 2/3 for the medium!

Recipe Method:
Sautee the onion in butter, in a big pot.
Increase heat then add the finely diced beef and stir while continuing to cook for another 5 minutes or so.
Once most of it is starting to brown, add in the diced carrots and potatoes.
Stir these through and continue to cook, stirring again every couple of minutes.
Once carrots and potatoes would be hot, add in the peas, stirring and adding 'till it looks right'. If adding liquid stock, add with the peas so excess liquid can be cooked off.
Once the peas are cooked, add in seasoning... a few shakes of Worcestershire sauce, Celtic sea salt, tomato paste etc. Stir through thoroughly and finally add flour for thickening, a little at a time and then stir. You want NO liquid in the pot as once cooking in the oven, the vegies will produce more liquid)
At this point, everything in your pot is cooked. Stir in tomato paste now, if using.
Turn it off and allow to cool for half an hour... now is a good time to get the first sheets of pastry from the freezer. I can only fit one tray of pasties in my oven at a time so I defrost pastry accordingly.

Ready for cooling

You can start doing the pasties after about 20-30 minutes of cooling. Sooner will 'melt' holes in the bottom of the pastry and they'll fall apart as you move them to baking trays.

Spoon it onto the pastry (which you've already cut to size if needed), fold over the tops and press seal with a fork. Bake at about 180/350 till golden for eating right away or slightly less golden if you want to be able to keep in fridge or freezer for reheating.

2 Jumbo ones about to be sealed

4 small ones (half jumbo) ready for the oven

One jumbo almost gone and thoroughly enjoyed!