Cookbook:Jamaican Patty

Jamaican Patty
Category	Jamaican recipes
Difficulty

Cookbook | Recipes | Ingredients | Equipment | Techniques | Cookbook Disambiguation Pages | Recipes | Cuisine of Jamaica

A Jamaican patty is a street food that contains various fillings and spices baked inside a flaky pastry shell. As its name suggests, it is commonly found in Jamaica, and is also eaten in other areas of the Caribbean. It is traditionally filled with ground beef, or with ground mutton or goat, and fillings also include chicken, vegetables, fish and cheese. Patties following recipes with halal meats or vegetable based substitutes can also be found.

In recent years, the Jamaican meat patty can be found pre-made and frozen in Great Britain and North America, primarily Canada. Conventionally, patties are marked with a colored dot on the crust to indicate the filling:

• No dot: ground beef
• Red dot: Spicy ground Beef
• Green dot: vegetables (often not vegetarian, containing animal suet, tallow, and/or other animal ingredients; vegetarians must inquire whether recipes are suitable for their diets)

Ingredients

Filling

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 2 bundles fresh thyme
• 1 tsp paprika
• ½ loaf of French bread (e.g. baguette)
• ½ tsp Island Spice Scotch Bonnet Soya Sauce
• 2 oz scallion or spring onion
• 1 tsp salt

Pastry

• 2 cups flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup lard
• 1 cup cold water
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric (or ½ teaspoon Jamaican Curry Powder and ½ teaspoon annatto for coloring)
• Beef filling for patties
• ½ cup milk

Procedure

Filling

1. Grind together scallion and Island Spice Scotch Bonnet Pepper Soya sauce. Add to ground beef along with salt and thyme.
2. Cook beef.
3. While beef is cooking, pour cold water over bread in a saucepan to cover. Soak for a few minutes, then squeeze dry, saving the water.
4. Pass bread through a mincing mill, and return the ground bread to the water with thyme and cook until bread is dry. Combine meat and cooked bread.
5. Add paprika and cook for 20 minutes.
6. Remove from heat.
7. Allow to cool.

Pastry

1. Sift flour, turmeric, curry powder, salt and knead in lard.
2. Bind with water to form a firm dough and knead for 2 minutes.
3. Roll pastry ⅛ inch thick.
4. Cut out pastry rounds 6 inches in diameter.
5. Divide beef filling between patties, and brush edges with water.
6. Fold dough over filling, and seal. Brush with milk.
7. Bake on top shelf of oven for about 25 minutes at 450°F until golden brown

Notes, tips, and variations

• For extra crust flakiness, roll out dough, brush with lard, fold over and roll again. Do this about 3 times.