Chef Thomas
A Proper Ploughman's Board
A board of good cheddar, thick ham, proper pickle, hard-boiled eggs, and crusty bread. Not cooking so much as assembling with conviction, and one of the finest lunches the English kitchen has ever produced.
Culinary Explorer
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Forfar Bridies
Created by Chef Thomas
Chopped beef steak, onion, and suet in a horseshoe of pastry, baked until the kitchen smells like a Saturday in Angus. Two holes in the crust. No potato. Noargument.
Appetizers & Snacks
British
Picnic
Comfort Food
40 min
Active Time
35 min cook•1 hr 15 min total
Yield4 bridies
January rain on the windows and the oven already warm. That's when a bridie makes sense. Not a pasty, not a pie, not a sausage roll. A bridie. From Forfar, in Angus, where they've been making them long enough to have settled every argument about what goes inside.
The filling is chopped beef steak, onion, and suet. That's it. No potato, no swede, no carrot. If you put potato in a bridie, you've made a pasty and someone from Forfar will tell you so. The meat is chopped, never minced. This matters more than you'd think. Chopped steak has grain and texture; mince has neither. The suet melts through as it bakes, keeping everything rich and damp inside the pastry. Two holes in the crust means there's onion. One hole means plain. I've never understood the plain ones, but there it is.
The pastry is short, buttery, and wants to be rolled out without fuss. The shape is a horseshoe, crimped along the top, not folded along the side like a Cornish pasty. Every region has its geometry and Forfar's is this: a curved thing, golden brown, warm in the hand, deeply satisfying eaten standing up in a cold kitchen or wrapped in paper for a long walk.
I wrote it down in the notebook after the first time I made them at home: beef, onion, suet, pastry. Cold day. Good.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
rump steak
Quantity
450g
trimmed of sinew, chopped into small pieces
beef suet
Quantity
75g
shredded
onion
Quantity
1 medium
finely chopped
fine sea salt
Quantity
to taste
black pepper
Quantity
to taste
cold water
Quantity
1 tablespoon
plain flour
Quantity
350g
fine sea salt (for pastry)
Quantity
pinch
cold unsalted butter
Quantity
175g
cubed
ice-cold water (for pastry)
Quantity
4-5 tablespoons
egg
Quantity
1
beaten, for glazing
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| rump steaktrimmed of sinew, chopped into small pieces | 450g |
| beef suetshredded | 75g |
| onionfinely chopped | 1 medium |
| fine sea salt | to taste |
| black pepper | to taste |
| cold water | 1 tablespoon |
| plain flour | 350g |
| fine sea salt (for pastry) | pinch |
| cold unsalted buttercubed | 175g |
| ice-cold water (for pastry) | 4-5 tablespoons |
| eggbeaten, for glazing | 1 |
Equipment Needed
- •Large mixing bowl
- •Rolling pin
- •Sharp heavy knife and chopping board
- •Baking tray lined with parchment
Instructions
- 1
Make the pastry
Put the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the cold butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs with some larger, flattish pieces of butter still visible. Those pieces are what give the pastry its flake. Add the ice-cold water a tablespoon at a time, cutting it through with a knife, until the dough just holds together when you press a handful. Don't overwork it. Wrap in cling film, press into a flat disc, and rest it in the fridge for at least thirty minutes.
Cold hands, cold butter, cold water. Everything cold. If the butter softens, the pastry toughens. If your kitchen runs warm, put the cubed butter back in the fridge for ten minutes before you start. - 2
Prepare the filling
Chop the steak by hand into small pieces, roughly the size of your little fingernail. Not minced, chopped. This is the difference between a bridie and something lesser. The texture of chopped beef in a pastry is entirely different from mince: it has bite, it has grain, it has the feeling of proper meat. Mix it in a bowl with the chopped onion and the suet. Season generously with salt and pepper and add a tablespoon of cold water to help the filling steam inside the pastry as it bakes.
A sharp, heavy knife and a steady board. You can ask the butcher to chop it, but doing it yourself gives you control over the size. Unevenness is fine. Some pieces a bit bigger, some smaller. It cooks more interestingly that way. - 3
Shape the bridies
Set the oven to 200C/180C fan. Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface to the thickness of a pound coin. Cut four rounds, each about the size of a dinner plate. Divide the filling between the rounds, spooning it onto one half and leaving a good border. Fold the uncovered half over to make a horseshoe shape, not a half-moon. The straight edge is the top and you crimp it by pressing and folding the pastry over itself with your fingers. It doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to be sealed. Poke two small holes in the top of each bridie. Two holes means onion inside. That's the tradition.
The horseshoe shape matters. A bridie is not a pasty. It's folded along the top, not along the side. The crimped edge sits across the curve of the back, like a spine. - 4
Glaze and bake
Brush each bridie with beaten egg. Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until the pastry is a deep, confident gold and the kitchen smells of butter and beef and something you want to eat immediately. The pastry should feel firm when you tap it, and the colour should be even, darker at the crimped edges where the layers have browned. Let them rest for five minutes before eating. The filling inside is scalding.
Chef Tips
- •The steak is everything. Use rump, or a good piece of braising steak if you prefer. What matters is that you chop it yourself, by hand, into rough, irregular pieces. The texture of a bridie depends on this completely. Mince gives you a different thing altogether, a lesser thing.
- •Beef suet is not optional. It melts as the bridie bakes and bastes the filling from the inside. Without it, the filling dries out. You can buy it shredded from the butcher or in packets from the supermarket. The butcher's is better.
- •These travel well. Wrap them in greaseproof paper while still warm and take them on a walk, on a train, to a football match, to a desk. A bridie eaten somewhere cold, from a paper bag, with slightly burned fingers, is a fine thing.
- •Season the filling more boldly than feels comfortable. The pastry absorbs seasoning. What tastes right as a raw filling will taste timid once it's wrapped in a layer of butter and flour.
Advance Preparation
- •The pastry can be made the day before and kept in the fridge, well wrapped. It rolls out more easily after a proper chill.
- •Unbaked bridies freeze well. Assemble, glaze, and freeze on a tray before transferring to a bag. Bake from frozen at 190C/170C fan for forty to forty-five minutes.
- •Baked bridies keep in the fridge for two days and reheat well in a warm oven for ten minutes. The microwave will rob the pastry of everything good about it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 280g)
Calories
995 calories
Total Fat
63 g
Saturated Fat
36 g
Trans Fat
2 g
Unsaturated Fat
25 g
Cholesterol
235 mg
Sodium
730 mg
Total Carbohydrates
70 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
2 g
Protein
36 g
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