This is my Mom's recipe, and I think it was her Mom's recipe also. I hope you enjoy it. There's nothing quite like the smell of pasties cooking. Reminds me of home.

 Crust Ingredients

 1 cup boiling water

 1 cup Crisco

 3 cups all-purpose flour

  Filling Ingredients

 3 cups diced potatoes

 ¾ cup diced carrots

 ¾ cup diced rutabaga

 1 cup diced onion

 1 lb lean ground beef

 1 tbsp dried parsley

 salt & pepper to taste

  soft butter or margarine

 Crust

 Add boiling water to a medium bowl. Melt crisco in boiling water, stirring until all crisco is melted. Stir in flour, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour. Take dough out of refrigerator about 30 minutes before you start putting pasties together.

 Filling

 In a large bowl, mix potatoes, carrots, rutabaga & onion. Add ground beef in small pieces (about the size of a quarter). After about each ¼ pound of meat, sprinkle with salt & pepper, then stir into mix. Repeat until all the ground beef is added. Sprinkle on the parsley and stir mixture.

This recipe is supposed to make 6 pasties, but it always makes 8 for me. Cut the crust into 8 sections. On a floured surface, roll out one of the 8 sections into about an 8-inch circle. Place 1 cup of filling toward the edge of the rolled out dough.

  Put a small amount of butter or margarine on top of the filling. Fold dough over leaving about 1 inch to fold up and seal the pasty. Trim excess before sealing. Fold the edge up and push down with your thumb along the edge to seal. Puncture top with fork to allow steam to escape.

 Bake on an ungreased sheet pan (I use parchment paper) at 375° for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350° and bake for 50 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer to a plate and enjoy. I use a fork to break the seal around the pasty, open the pasty up and top with ketchup. That's the way to enjoy an authentic UP pasty. For those of you that don't know, UP is short for Upper Peninsula (of Michigan). That's north of the bridge & just south of heaven.

 This picture is of some mini-pasties I made for work (½ cup of filling each, makes 16 pasties). For the pasties you do not plan to eat immediately (how often does that happen?) let them cool on the pan, then using a spatula, transfer them to a rack to finish cooling.

 When cool, warp in paper towel and refrigerate. To freeze, remove from refrigerator, remove paper towel, warp in wax paper then wrap in aluminum foil.

 Pasties are also great cold. Just cut in half and eat like a sandwich.

 We take cold pasties along when traveling. They are also great for picnics.