Jamaican patties

Ingredients

• Flour500 g
• Turmeric2 tsp
• Curry powder1 tsp
• Lard or shortening — cold250 g
• Iced water150 ml
• Minced beef600 g
• Onions2
• Scotch bonnet1
• Thyme4 sprig
• Ground allspice1 tsp
• Breadcrumbs60 g
• Beef stock250 ml
• Spring onions4
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Mix the flour with turmeric, curry powder and salt and rub in the cold fat in large pieces, not to a fine crumb.

   12 min

2. 2

   Add the iced water and bring the dough together without kneading, then chill it half an hour.

   35 min

3. 3

   Roll it out, fold it in three and repeat twice more, chilling between folds.

   40 min

4. 4

   Fry the onion, spring onion, thyme and chopped scotch bonnet, add the mince and cook it through.

   15 min

5. 5

   Add the stock, allspice and breadcrumbs and cook ten minutes to a juicy but not runny filling.

   12 min

6. 6

   Cool the filling completely, roll out the dough and cut fifteen-centimetre rounds.

   25 min

7. 7

   Put filling on half of each round, fold it over, crimp with a fork and bake at 200 °C for thirty minutes.

   35 min

About the dish

The yellow of the dough comes from turmeric rather than egg. It goes straight into the flour, and without it a patty looks pale and simply wrong.

The dough is laminated: cold fat is rubbed in in large pieces and the dough folded three times. That is why a patty flakes rather than crumbles.

The filling is cooled completely and kept on the loose side — it should be juicy inside. A dry filling reads as the mark of cheap baking.

Worth knowing

• — The fat has to stay cold at every stage. Melted, it is absorbed into the flour and there are no layers.
• — The filling goes in cold. Warm, it melts the fat in the pastry from within and the patty leaks in the oven.
• — Scotch bonnet is very hot. One chilli to a kilo of mince is enough, and the seeds are better removed.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

580 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

36 g

Carbs

42 g

More from Jamaica

• Jerk chicken — Chicken in a marinade of scotch bonnet and allspice, smoked over pimento wood.
• Ackee and saltfish — Jamaica's national dish: ackee fruit, which looks and behaves like scrambled egg, with soaked salt cod.
• Rice and peas — Rice cooked with red beans in coconut milk, with thyme and a whole scotch bonnet.