Only the best ingredients go into making a pasty. For example, a lean cut of beef, such as flank steak, is used. It is cut by hand into very small pieces by folks who have been making pasties for many years.
How to Make a
Proper Pasty -- UP Style!
| About once a month the men and women of
Ishpeming Wesley UMC gather together to create 500 pasties. These
pasties are sold throughout the community, the money being used for
projects of the United Methodist Women.
Only the best ingredients go into making a pasty. For example, a lean cut of beef, such as flank steak, is used. It is cut by hand into very small pieces by folks who have been making pasties for many years.
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Then there are the potatoes, onions and
the rutabaga. Most of the potatoes are "chipped" by hand,
the old fashioned way, as the women are doing on the left.
While the rutabaga is diced by machine, the large sweet onions are all cut into tiny pieces by hand out in the kitchen. |
| Then it all goes together into a crust under the hands of some of the UP's finest pasty artists using the oldest and most trusted methods. | ||
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The pasties coming out of the oven.
Our women are pretty particular about the pasties they make, insisting that the only thing that should go into them is chipped potatoes, finely cut lean beef, sweet onion, rutabaga, and just a dash of salt and pepper. Anything more or less and it must be something other than a real UP pasty!
Amazingly, standing orders mean that all 500 pasties are sold at the end of each pasty day. In fact, there is a waiting list that is quite long.
Pasties have a long tradition in the UP. The food came with the mining people of Cornwall who settled in the UP generations ago. The miners needed a nutritious food they could take down into the mines and eat quickly and easily. Pasties were the answer.
The people of Wesley UMC have been making pasties for many years. In fact, much of the money used to build the present church building was raised by money from pasties.
