🇬🇧 How to Make Cornish Pasty

Craving Cornish Pasty? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Cornish Pasty at home, in about 1 hr 30 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

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• Pastry: 500g strong plain flour
• 125g lard or shortening
• 125g cold butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 175ml cold water
• 1 egg, beaten
• Filling: 400g beef skirt, diced small
• 400g potato, diced small
• 200g swede, diced small
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• plenty of salt and coarse black pepper
• a knob of butter per pasty

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Use strong flour and both fats. A pasty was carried down a mine and had to survive the journey — shortcrust made with plain flour cracks, and this pastry is deliberately tougher than a pie crust.
2. Rub the fats in, bring together with the cold water, and rest the dough in the fridge for at least an hour. Unrested, it shrinks and splits in the oven.
3. Dice the filling; never mince it. And put it in raw — everything cooks inside the sealed pastry in its own steam, which is the entire design of the thing.
4. Layer potato, swede, onion then beef on one half of a rolled circle, season very generously at each layer, and add a knob of butter on top. Under-seasoning is the most common failure, since there is no sauce.
5. Fold over, press out the air, and crimp the edge with your thumb and forefinger into a rope. The crimp goes on the side, not on top — it was the handle, held with dirty hands and thrown away.
6. Cut a small steam vent, egg wash, and bake at 190°C for 50–55 minutes until deep gold.
7. Cool for 15 minutes before eating. Straight from the oven the filling will take the roof of your mouth off.