Montana · Main
Butte Pasty
- Intermediate
- 1 h 40 m
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- For the pastry: 375g flour, 1 tsp salt, 170g lard, 120ml cold water
- 350g beef skirt or sirloin, diced small
- 3 potatoes, diced small
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 rutabaga, diced small
- 2 tbsp butter
- Salt and plenty of black pepper
- 1 egg, beaten
- Brown gravy to serve
The skills inside
Pie crust & blind bakingKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasEgg wash & the baker’s shine
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cut the lard into the flour and salt, bind with cold water, and rest 30 min. 30 min
- Mix the raw beef, potato, onion, and rutabaga and season hard: everything cooks inside the crust.
- Roll rounds, mound filling on one half, dot with butter, fold, and crimp a rope seal.
- Vent, brush with egg, and bake at 200C for 20 min, then 175C for 40 min until deep gold. 20 min
- Rest 10 min and serve with brown gravy poured over, the Butte way. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
Egg wash & the baker’s shine 34 recipes
- Applied thin and even over every surface that will show, with no bare patches and no ridges or brush lines standing in it.
- Nothing pooled: no wash run down into the seams, collected in the corners, or welded to the tray around the base.
- It has not glued shut what needs to move: layers, scores, and cut edges are still free to open in the heat.
- Baked, the finish is even and glossy across the whole piece and deep gold rather than patchy, with no darker bands where the wash sat heavy.
- The shine is on the outside only: nothing inside the piece tastes of egg.
Where it goes wrong The wash went on heavy and ran into the scores and down to the tray, so the piece baked sealed along its seams, browned unevenly, and carries dark rubbery ridges where the egg collected.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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