Pies and pasties are different things in this part of the US at least. But I also think we’re about the only part of the US that has pasties, and one of the few where meat pies are relatively common.
They both have similar ingredients, but a pasty is much coarser ground - the potatoes, onions, and rutabagas are in chunks and separate and distinct from the meat. Meat pies, at least around here, tend to be much finer ground and the herb/spice blend is vastly different than a pasty. They might look the same, but they eat different.
Like most foods they’re variable, but done right they are indeed delicious.
Meat pies tend to have a runnier filling, with chunks of meat in gravy. Pasties have a drier filling, bound together with potato, as they are designed to be eaten with your hands (the pronounced crimped edge of the pastry was, according to legend, to give the tin miners something to grasp with their filthy mitts) and you don’t want loads of gravy spilling out.
Huh? There’s nothing specifically British about using the culinary term “chunks”, which more or less means “roughly cubical segments of meat, fruit or vegetable of approximately one- or two-bite size”. It’s a very common term in American cookbooks and food marketing. (Never heard of pineapple chunks?)
Just because you personally may associate the word “chunks” exclusively with vomit doesn’t mean that any other American shares your squeamishness.
I speak American, not British. And, like others have pointed out, “chunks” is pretty common when it comes to describing food. Chunk tuna, Chocolate chunks (like chips but larger/more square), and the aforementioned Chunky PB and pineapple chunks. I don’t associate “chunk” with vomit at all.
Hi Athena. I don’t know where you are in the US, but I’m originaly from East TN and my grandmother taught me how to make pasties. (Her family was from England.) She would make one per family member.
She started with some rolled-out dough, about 8" square. In the center she put cubes of sirloin, cubed potatoes, and a little chopped onion. Salt & pepper and a pat of butter on top. Then she brought up the corners and crimped them together, leaving a little “mouth,” like a volcano, in which she poured some water, which basically cooked away because the pasties were moist but not wet—no gravy.
Since I don’t know how many generations had passed since her family came over here, I don’t know how accurate her recipe still was, but that’s the one she taught me. I always wanted to add peas and/or carrots but she’d say, “That’s not the recipe!”
Oh, I didn’t mean that my area is the only area where people make pasties - obviously, they’re an old Cornish thing and anyone with English/Cornish ancestors probably know about them.
We are, however, one of the few areas where they’re ubiquitous. There’s two pasty shops in my small town, several more within a 10 or 15 mile radius, and it’s not at all uncommon for churches and restaurants to make and sell pasties. I didn’t really know that pasties were less popular nationally than, say, hamburgers when I was a kid.
