Da Yooper Pastie

We're getting back to our Yooper roots tonight, with home-made pasties. Do NOT pronounce this (Pay-stee), that's a woman's undergarment. Anyways, my Aunt Linda made awesome pasties at the family reunion, so I tried my hand at it.

Da Yooper Pastie
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Pie Dough:
-3 cups flour
-1 1/4 cup Crisco shortening
-1/2 cup water
-1 tsp. salt

Mix the flour and salt. Then cut in shortening a little at a time. Now put in the water all at once and mix with a spoon, until you have a clump of dough that stays together. This dough will be very moist, so you can work just enough flour in with your hands to make it a plyable and soft dough. Hint: Use a lot of flour when rolling, also.

Filling:
1 lb. cubed steak (round, sirloin, ground chuck, depending on your budget)
4 cups cubed pealed potatoes
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup of 1/4 inch cubed rutabaga (carrot can be substituted, but rutababas are better)
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

Preheat your oven to 375 Degrees F
Mix it all in a large bowl.
Divide the dough into 4 equal portions and roll out one at a time into a 12" circle about 1/4 inch thickness (use lots of flour on your rolling surface)
Fill each with one with a heafty size cup of the filling. Fold the crust over the mixture. (It now is a half circle).
Roll the excess edge up to meet the form of the ingredients.
Gently pick up the pastie with a spatula and place on a large cookie sheet and cook them for 1 hour.

This took me about 2 hours to prep from peeling the potatoes to closing the crusts, plus the hour to cook, so make these if you have time and want to feel like "Suzie Homemaker." IF you don't have the time that I did today, you can save about half (or more) time by buying premade pie crusts (try Crisco's), and buy pre-cubed steak, or if you don't like rutabaga, buy pre-cut carrots. So don't shy away from this recipe because it seems long and tedious. There ARE shortcuts.




I have a really cool How-To coming up that my husband thought of, and another How-To that my uncle is teaching me how to do (but I'm desperately trying to find a special drill bit)