The first pasty I ever ate in Wyoming came out of a foil-lined cooler in a parking lot in Hanna, on a cold October Saturday when I’d driven down from Casper mostly to see the old mining country for myself. A woman had a folding table set up outside the community hall, selling them two for a price that felt like theft in my favor, and she handed me one wrapped in a paper towel and told me to eat it with my hands like I meant it. I did. It was a whole meal sealed inside golden pastry — beef, potato, onion, and something earthy I couldn’t quite place — and I stood there in the wind eating it and thinking about the men who used to carry these underground a hundred years ago.
I grew up in St. Louis, where a hand pie was a toaster pastry, and I didn’t think much about food until the military dragged me around the country and a few deployments taught me that people put their whole history into what they eat. Wyoming has been the best teacher of all. The pasty isn’t a Wyoming invention — not even close — but it put down roots in our coal towns and never left, and that’s a story worth telling before we get our hands in the flour.
Where the Wyoming Pasty Actually Comes From
The pasty (say it “PASS-tee,” rhymes with “nasty,” and do not let anyone convince you otherwise) is Cornish. It comes from the tin and copper country of Cornwall in far southwest England, where miners’ wives packed their husbands a self-contained lunch: beef, potato, swede (that’s rutabaga to us), and onion, seasoned with nothing but salt and pepper and sealed inside a sturdy shortcrust that could survive a day in a pocket.
When the Cornish mines began to fail in the 1800s, those miners scattered across the mining world — so many of them, and so reliably, that they earned a nickname wherever they landed: “Cousin Jacks.” They turned up in the copper of Michigan, the gold of California, and the coal seams of the Mountain West. Wyoming’s coal country pulled in a staggering mix of people. Rock Springs alone is said to have been settled by immigrants of some 56 different nationalities, one of the most diverse melting pots west of the Mississippi, and the coal camps of Sweetwater and Carbon counties — Hanna, Reliance, Cumberland down near Kemmerer — filled up with families from all over the world, each bringing their own food underground with them.
The pasty was built for exactly that life. It needed no plate, no fork, no reheating — though a miner could warm one on a shovel held over his candle if he wanted. It held its heat for hours. And the thick rope of crimped pastry along the edge wasn’t decoration: it was a handle. A miner could hold a pasty by that crimp with filthy, coal-black hands, eat the clean middle, and toss the grimy crust when he was done. There’s a lovely bit of Cornish folklore that some of them left that last bit of crust behind on purpose — an offering to the “knockers,” the small mischievous spirits said to live in the mine and knock on the walls, sometimes to warn of a cave-in, sometimes just to cause trouble. Keep the knockers fed and they’d keep you safe.
I’ll be honest about the limits of what I can prove here: the deep history of these coal towns is well documented, and the Hanna mine disasters of 1903 and 1908 are a real and heavy part of that record. But I couldn’t find a source that pins the pasty specifically to a named Cornish community in a named Wyoming town, so I’m not going to invent one. What’s true is that the pasty is Cornish, that Cornish miners fanned out across the American West, and that it became a beloved coal-country food in Wyoming that people here still make and sell today. That’s enough. Like our chuckwagon cooking, it’s frontier food — built for hard work, made from whatever kept.
Why This Recipe Works
A proper pasty is almost aggressively simple, and that simplicity is the whole trick. There’s no gravy inside, no browning the meat first, no sauce. You put everything in raw. As the pasty bakes, the beef and vegetables steam together inside the sealed crust and make their own juices — that’s the “gravy,” and it tastes like the ingredients instead of like a can. The pastry is a shortcrust built to be strong rather than flaky, so it holds up to handling. Get the dice right, seal it properly, and you get a real meal you can eat standing up in a parking lot in Hanna. Ask me how I know.
Ingredients
For the pastry:
- 3 cups (360g) all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 6 tablespoons cold lard or shortening, cubed (lard is traditional and worth it)
- About 3/4 cup ice water
- 1 egg, beaten, for egg wash
For the filling:
- 3/4 lb beef skirt steak or chuck, cut into 1/4-inch dice
- 2 medium Yukon Gold or other waxy potatoes, peeled and diced small
- 1 cup diced rutabaga (swede)
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 1 to 1.5 teaspoons salt
- Plenty of black pepper — more than you think
- 1 tablespoon cold butter, cut into small pieces
A heavy French rolling pin makes rolling these rounds a lot easier, and I always egg-wash with a proper silicone pastry brush so the tops come out lacquered and golden instead of blotchy.
How to Make Cornish Pasties
Step 1: Make the pastry
Whisk the flour and salt together. Cut in the cold butter and lard with your fingers or a pastry cutter until you have a coarse, pebbly mix. Drizzle in ice water a little at a time, stirring, until the dough just comes together — don’t overwork it. Pat into two disks, wrap, and chill at least an hour. Cold dough is non-negotiable.
Step 2: Prep the filling
Here’s the rule that separates a pasty from a Hot Pocket: dice, don’t mince. You want everything in roughly 1/4-inch pieces so there’s real texture and chew — the miners wanted to know they were eating something. Toss the beef, potato, rutabaga, and onion together in a bowl with the salt and a heavy hand of black pepper. Keep it cold until you’re ready.
Step 3: Roll and fill
Roll each dough disk out and cut into rounds about 8 inches across (a dinner plate makes a good template). Pile a generous mound of filling onto one half of each round, leaving a clean border. Dot the top of the filling with a few pieces of cold butter. Don’t overfill — an overstuffed pasty splits.
Step 4: Crimp the edge
Brush the border with a little water, fold the pastry over into a half-moon, and press the edges together. Now crimp: starting at one corner, fold and roll the edge over on itself in overlapping pleats, working down the seam. The crimp goes along the side, never across the top — that’s the traditional D-shape, and that ridge is your handle. It takes a couple tries to get pretty. Mine still aren’t.
Step 5: Vent, wash, and bake
Cut one small slit in the top of each pasty to let steam escape. Brush all over with beaten egg. Bake at 400°F for about 15 minutes, then drop to 350°F and bake another 35 to 45 minutes, until deep golden brown and the filling is tender when you poke a knife through the vent. Let them rest 10 minutes before eating — the inside is molten.
Tips for the Best Pasties
- Keep everything cold. Warm fat makes tough, greasy pastry. Chill the dough, chill the filling.
- Season the filling hard. Raw potato and rutabaga soak up salt. Under-seasoned is the most common way a pasty disappoints.
- Rutabaga, not turnip. The yellow-fleshed swede is the real thing and gives that earthy sweetness. A white turnip isn’t the same.
- Don’t skip the vent. No steam escape means a burst pasty and a soggy bottom.
- Wyoming twist: plenty of folks up here swap the beef for ground elk or venison from the fall harvest. If you go wild game, add just a touch more fat (a little extra butter or some diced bacon) since elk and deer run lean — but the classic beef version is the historical dish, and it’s the one I’d start with.
What to Serve With Pasties
A traditional pasty is a complete meal on its own — that was the entire point — so you don’t need much. A sharp pickle or a dab of brown sauce or ketchup on the side is standard, and honestly a cold beer does the rest. If you’re feeding a crowd or building a proper cold-weather spread, a pot of Wyoming cowboy beans alongside turns this into a full mining-camp table, which feels exactly right.
Storage & Reheating
Pasties keep beautifully — it’s in their nature. Cooled pasties last 3 to 4 days in the fridge, wrapped. To reheat, skip the microwave (it kills the crust) and warm them in a 350°F oven for 10 to 15 minutes until hot through and crisp again. They also freeze like champions: freeze them baked and cooled, wrap tight, and they’ll hold for up to 3 months. Reheat straight from frozen at 350°F for about 30 minutes. I keep a few in the freezer for the mornings I’m heading out hunting — a pasty in a coat pocket is still the best cold-weather lunch ever invented.
Carry a Little Wyoming History in Your Hands
That’s what I love about this one. You make a batch of pasties and you’re not just cooking dinner — you’re doing the exact thing families in Hanna and Rock Springs did a hundred years ago, sending someone off to hard work with a warm meal they could hold in one hand. Feed the knockers if you’re feeling superstitious. Then eat the rest standing up, with your hands, like you mean it.
If you make these, tag me @wyofood on Instagram or Facebook — I want to see your crimps, even the ugly ones. Especially the ugly ones.
— Sean