Over ten years ago, when I was a chef, we had Jamaican Beef Patties as a hors d’oeuvre option for weddings that we would cater. They were trendy, and I loved them! 

That memory popped back up recently, and suddenly, I needed to eat them again. And it’s no coincidence that National Jamaican Patty Day is only 121 days away (the first Saturday in August). That’s a joke, but it does give you enough time to fall in love with these beautiful pastries and learn how to make them, so let’s do that. 

Let’s start with what a Jamaican beef patty is. 

It is a half-moon-shaped flaky pastry filled with beef but can also created with other meats. 

Upon researching these, I found 20 different recipes before realizing that the only thing that may make them authentic is that they are typically spicy, and turmeric is the main spice used in the recipe. 

The turmeric gives this buttery, flaky, amazing dough its yellow color. 

Other than that, whoever makes them with love can call their beef patty authentic. 

Jamaicans and immigrants from the UK and Africa influenced Jamaican beef patties. The different migrants had their influence on the dish, adding their own flair. 

The patties then became popular in North America around the ’60s as Jamaicans immigrated north. In New York, they began to pop up on restaurants’ menus. They became popular street food, and at one point Canada attempted to stop street cart merchants from using the term patty since the term referred to a burger patty and the Jamaican beef patty is more a turnover. With some pushback, Canada finally dropped their attempt to ban the term “patty” in 1985 and compromised to allow the term “Jamaican Patty” to be used. I don’t care what you call them. I want to eat all the Jamaican beef patties.

We’re about to get to the recipe, but let’s discuss ingredients and some how-to first. 

The heat comes from scotch bonnets. Scotch bonnets are peppers that have quite a bit of heat, but also a bit of a sweet fruity type of flavor profile. 

Unfortunately, after checking three stores, I could not find them and substituted the scotch bonnets for habaneros. They don’t have the same flavor profile, but for this recipe it is a suitable replacement. 

The recipe would also fare better with Jamaican curry, but alas, I could not find it, so I am substituting it for curry powder found at any of our local grocers. 

This recipe will include instructions on how to make the pastry dough, but if you’d like to skip this part, you could buy premade pastry dough sheets from the store. 

The only thing with doing this is that you won’t have the turmeric incorporated into the crust. You could add a dash of turmeric to the meat mixture while making it to ensure you get some of that great flavor in there. 

You can mince the onion, garlic, and peppers with a knife, but I prefer using a food processor to puree these ingredients, which evenly spreads all the flavor throughout the meat filling. 

It’s also much quicker! 

You cannot cut corners if you decide to make the dough from scratch. You should take the time that you need to prepare it. Once the dough is formed, it must be wrapped and refrigerated for at least one hour. It requires time to harden and come together. Since it is a butter-based dough, if it gets too warm, it will not perform the way it is intended to. Once the hour has passed, the dough must sit at room temperature for 15 minutes. Again, no skipping this timeframe. The 15 minutes takes the chill off the dough and allows you to work with it and roll it out.