Jamaican Beef Patties
Turmeric pastry folded round spiced minced beef and baked. The colour comes from the pastry, not the filling.
Photograph credit: 06 Inside Jamaican Beef Patty - Sybil's Bakery by jasonlam · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
The filling must be completely cold before it goes into the pastry — warm filling melts the fat in the dough and you lose the flakiness entirely. Make it the day before if you can. The breadcrumbs in the filling are not padding either: they absorb the gravy so it stays inside the patty rather than boiling out through the crimp.
What People Ask
How long does Jamaican Beef Patties take to make?
40 minutes of preparation and 30 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour 45 minutes of chilling the pastry and cooling the filling, so allow 2 hours 55 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
Jamaican Beef Patties: Step by Step
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Rub the cold shortening into the flour, turmeric, curry powder and pastry salt until it looks like coarse crumbs with some larger pieces.
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Add the ice-cold water and bring together into a dough without kneading. Wrap and chill 45 minutes.
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While the pastry chills, heat the oil and fry the onion for 6 minutes, then add the spring onions, scotch bonnet, garlic and thyme for 2 minutes.
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Add the mince and cook 10 minutes, breaking it up, until browned and dry.
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Stir in the filling curry powder, allspice and salt and cook 1 minute.
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Add the breadcrumbs and stock and simmer 8 minutes, until thick with no free liquid.
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Cool the filling completely, at least 1 hour.
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Roll the pastry to 3 mm and cut 16 cm rounds.
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Put filling on one half of each round, fold over, and crimp the edge firmly with a fork.
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Brush with beaten egg and bake at 190°C / 375°F for 30 minutes, until deep gold.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Getting Right
- Cold filling into cold pastry.
- Breadcrumbs hold the gravy in.
- Crimp firmly or they leak.
Changing the Recipe
- Out of spring onions? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Serve It With
A coco bread roll · Hot pepper sauce · Ting
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Jamaican Fry Dumplings, Fried Sweet Plantain.
Keeping and Reheating
Freeze unbaked for 3 months and bake from frozen, adding 10 minutes.
Jamaican Beef Patties Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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