Stop for a minute and ponder: can you think of a food culture that doesn’t have a cherished item of meat wrapped in bread? Pretty much every food culture includes a handheld meat pie, and many of them claim to have invented said pie. In truth, the earliest references to a handheld pie stuffed with vegetables and meat is from ancient Persia, around 100 BCE. Shepherds and travelers carried them because they were portable, hearty, and inexpensive. The spread of handheld meat pies is a fantastic illustration of the way that colonialism spread food and ingredients around the globe, and then those foods evolved and were often assimilated into their new culture. Italian calzones, Indian samosas, Scottish bridies, Malaysian karipap, Jamaican beef patties, Australian meat pies, Chinese xian bing, Nigerian meat pies, Russian and Ukrainian peroshky, Lebanese fatayer, Bolivian salteñas, Puerto Rican pastelillos, and of course - empanadas, which show up in Columbian, Salvadoran, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Spanish, Mexican, and Portuguese cuisines.

Here in Michigan, we have inherited the pasty. The pasty (pass-tee) is one of the most well-known and ubiquitous of Michigan foods, especially in the Upper Peninsula - you can buy them at gas stations and corner markets, and in many restaurants. Pasties came to the UP with immigrant miners in the late 1800s. The tin  and copper mining industries collapsed in Cornwall, UK just as copper and iron mining entered into a boom period in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Cornish miners brought their mining expertise to mining locations in the US - initially in Michigan and Wisconsin, and later to the western US - and along with that expertise, they brought their food traditions. The pasty was a perfect miner’s lunch in the same way it was for shepherds and travelers - portable and inexpensive (and delicious!).

In the UP, pasties are typically made with beef and a mixture of hardy veggies such as potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, and onions - all wrapped in a sturdy pastry dough that is braided along the rounded edge to create the perfect handle! Today, you can find a multitude of flavor combinations, but the pasty is a food that incites great debate over ingredients, condiments, and even the way the crust is crimped. If you want to see for yourself, just google “pasty debate” - but brace yourself for the fiery exchanges you’ll encounter. Carrots, ketchup, and lard are all hair trigger topics.

If you want to try your hand at baking pasties at home, here are two great recipes:

• A classic recipe from the Yooper Pasty Facebook page, with a sturdy shortcrust pastry. 

• This more contemporary recipe, which calls for butter and shortening instead of lard, and goes so far as to suggest the addition of peas or asparagus.