Makes: 500g pastry
Prep time: 10 minutes

So what is suet pastry and what makes it different from the other pastries? Well, for a start suet is a completely different kind of fat, usually found around the kidneys of a cow. This sort of fat produces fantastic flavour and has a few clever scientific tricks up its sleeve too. We use suet in baking as it melts much slower than butter and other fats, which tend to blend into the pastries they make. Suet can melt once the pastry has begun to set, making little puffs in the dough to create a really light – yet full flavoured – pastry. It’s more common to steam suet pastry in this country, but I have included a baked pastry recipe that will show that it crisps up beautifully too.

350g self-raising flour
200g beef suet
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
7–10 tablespoons ice cold water

Step 1
Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add a pinch of salt. Add some freshly milled black pepper, then add the suet and mix it into the flour using the blade of a knife.

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Step 2
When it’s evenly blended, add a few drops of cold water and start to mix with the knife, using curving movements and turning the mixture around. The aim is to bring it together as a dough, so keep adding drops of water until it begins to get really claggy and sticky.

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Step 3
Now go in with your hands and bring it all together until you have a nice, smooth elastic dough, which leaves the bowl clean.

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Step 4
It's worth noting that suet pastry always needs more water than other types, so if it is still a bit dry just go on adding a few drops at a time.

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Why not try:

Sweet suet pastry: Add 85g of sugar and the zest of one orange or lemon in with the dry ingredients of the recipe and bind into pastry with cold milk.

Wholemeal suet pastry: Use a mixture of 175g wholemeal self-raising flour and 175g of self raising flour instead of just self raising flour.

Suet pastry recipes: